Finding Memory
by jemmastarfall
Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.
1. Chapter 1: The Team

Ratings and Reasons: R, for violence, references to non-consensual sex and child abuse, violations of basic human rights, homosexual love and other adult themes. 

Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters; however, the concept and the plot are of my devising. No profit has been made or will be made from this venture, and no infringement of rights is intended.

Note: All coincidences are purely coincidental; this short story is not meant to infringe or insult any anthropologist anywhere. As I am not acquainted with ethnographers and I have just begun my first anthropology course, all of the anthropological activities are my creation and any passing similarity to established protocol is just that, passing and no more. It is my sincere hope that true anthropologists are more diligent and less self-centered that the characters portrayed.

**Chapter 1: The Team**

So, he had come to the base in order to get a new water filter, an axe that could hold an edge, and a new pot because the last one had been stolen. The message light had been blinking red for the first time since Jay died, and Heero had answered and accepted without thinking. Conditioning was still that strong. So, that was the why and the how of ending up here, in a miserable hotel room, waiting for the next plane and his anthropological team.

"Oi, I found it." A young male muttered, and there was the scrape of metal against metal as the key slid into the lock. "Finally."

Heero stiffened, and stared at the door.

Kicking his bag across the perimeter, the young male grouchily muttered something and flipped the light on. Seeing Heero, a look of unmistakable surprise flitted across his expressive features, and settled into his sharp grin. "Oh, sorry, man. I must have gotten the wrong room."

"113." Heero said, flatly.

Anyway, the young male glanced at his key, look a good look at the door, and then stared at Heero very suspiciously. "It's the right room. Why are you in my room?"

Heero blinked. "It's mine."

"Huh…" The young male flopped down onto the bed, his long braid of chestnut hair trailed across the metal bedframe and settled onto the cement. It must have been at least a yard long. In a light baritone that echoed in the small room, the young male queried, "So, if this room is yours, and this room is mine, it's gotta be both of ours, right? How come we're sharing? Did they run out of rooms, or something? Least they could have done was told me, man. This bed's tiny, bony, and small. Can't even fit my feet on."

"Hn." Heero grunted an acknowledgement of the sound, and continued to reconfigure his laptop to solar saturation mode that would make it self-sufficient.

"Talkative, aren't you?" The young male snorted, flipped around, and leaned up, bracing his face on his hands, to stare at the laptop. "Damn, you must be dumb as all get out to bring that to a jungle. I mean, have you seen these raindrops? Fuck. I mean, forget cats and dogs. It pours cows out here. Do you think they have cows?"

Heero finished fastening the screw, studiously ignoring the chatter. It took all of his self-control not to strangle the adolescent, then and there.

"Is this room 113?" Yet another young male stood at the door, squinting at the lettering, making his dark narrow eyes far more narrow. Strangely, though his clothing was quite travel stained, his hair was pulled back into an impeccably tight tail.

"Yup, this is it! The famous room 113, right?" The young male on the bed grinned widely. "Don't tell me you got it, too!"

Wordlessly, the adolescent at the door held up a key.

"Shit, man." The boy on the bed scooted over, and then slammed his hand down onto the pallet in what he obviously thought was a friendly manner. A moment later, though, he was wincing and messaging his palm. "Damn, did they stuff this fucker full of rocks and shit, or what?"

The adolescent at the door set down his bags, and then sat down gingerly on the bed. It was obviously not comfortable for either of them, and it seemed very silly to Heero that both still bothered to sit on it.

"So." The new adolescent checked on his dark hair, and seemed momentarily at a loss when his hands found the tail. "You don't act like a missionary."

"A WHAT?" The adolescent with the braided hair sat poker straight.

"Oh." The other boy blinked. "Well, that explains it."

"Oh, excuse me." A slight, nearly alto voice, sounded back in the vicinity of the door way. An adolescent with the general features of a prepubescent, nervously glanced into the room with wide blue eyes. "I don't mean to imply a lack of care, but, surely, I wonder…is this the right room?"

A very tall adolescent, with attractive but anonymous features and obscuring hair that was a gingery shade between any coloring, tapped on the door and nodded, once.

"Oh, well…" The preternaturally pale adolescent looked at each of them, seeming quite lost. "Um, yes…well, there doesn't quite seem like there will be enough room for all of us to stay here, really."

"Yo!" One of the adolescents on the bed sat up quickly, fiddling with his long braid and looking around. "You don't happen to be anthropologists, do ya? I sure am one, that's for sure."

There was a chorus of assent.

Heero Yuy carefully set aside his laptop, and looked at the adolescents. It was a primate peer group, he was sure. He had forgotten how horrible Homo Sapiens truly were, and he wondered how long he would last on this "team assignment."

Silence entered the room, and no one seemed to know quite what to do with it. They just looked at each other.

The pale one was finally stepped forward, and cleared his throat a little. "I'm Quatre Raberba Winner, with a forte of medical; in addition to my anthropology Ph.D., I have masters in psychology, sociology, nursing. Oh, yeah, and um, a business with a minor in law, though I hope that Allah will never give me the reason to use it."

Heero blinked. That Caucasian male was Arabic speaking Muslim?

"I've heard of you!" The braided one bounced back onto his heels.

Quatre looked pained. "You have?"

"Yeah." Nodding with painful alacrity, the braided one grinned and pumped Quatre's hand enthusiastically. "You're the man who wrote that fantastic paper on cross-cultural comparisons about naming kids after dead people."

"Oh! I am." Quatre fidgeted, and relaxed a little. A small, self-effacing but genuinely pleased smile played across his mouth. "I've never quite heard it described that way before, but, yes. That about sums it up, I guess."

"Way with words, eh?" He grinned proudly. "That's me. Duo Maxwell, at your service as long as it isn't too nasty. Major in linguistics, classical and modern languages, and a sociocultural anthro! I wrote my paper on death rituals—intensely fascinating, you know—and have been studying Western euphemisms, allusions and mythological death beliefs since. You wouldn't believe what I've unearthed!"

"Duo!" Quatre looked slightly nauseated and pleasantly shocked.

"If that disgusting effluvium of words has finished, Maxwell," the adolescent male sitting beside Duo looked disgusting, "I will tell you that I am Chang Wufei, a prehistoric anthropologist."

"Trowa Barton." The tall adolescent inclined his head. "I am a professional ethnographer."

"Dude, more like spy! You can get into any camp, no matter how tight!" Duo bounced up, and grinned at Trowa. "You even had the Romanys putting their genealogy cards down on the table, if you know what I mean, and the mafia, too, and…well, just about everyone who no one can talk to! That is too cool for words, man."

"I work with nomads." Trowa said, stiffly.

Quatre looked over, his blue eyes bright with curiosity. "So, how about you?"

"Yuy." Heero pulled his laptop over him, and began the careful process of setting the various waterproof sealants across the second layer of casing. It would be a found few pounds heavier, but he personally thought that the electronic addition to his gear would prove to be invaluable.

It was still quiet, so he looked up. "Heero Yuy. Physical, focus variance from forensic to primatology."

"Heero Yuy?" Duo asked, curiously. "As in the guy killed by WTO peacetalkers when advocating for aboriginal rights?"

"Hn." Heero shrugged. "I didn't choose it."

"Jesus, you must have had weird parents." Duo shook his head, and it caused his braid to move strangely. The braid must be heavy.

"That was very informative." Wufei said, dryly.

"Hm, well, he's got an Afrikaaner accent—you're the guy with the gorillas, huh—but I'd guess that he's had a thorough grounding his Swahili and that he spent a great deal of time in Yugoslavia and Indonesia. I bet his dad was British, but it sounds like, hmm…" Duo paused in thought. "I think his primary language may have been Japanese. It's in the rs and ls, buddy, and you just can't get the nasal out of your ns."

"Japanese?" Heero tackled the adolescent, stretching his fingers across the narrow throat, pinning Duo to the wall. The adam's apple was pointy in his palm. "Japanese."

"Yes." Duo croaked. "Can't help…hearing…"

Heero released him and looked deep into Duo's eyes. They weren't exactly blue or purple or anything, but more of an indigo. It was a primal sort of a color. An old and very valuable color. Slowly, he nodded and backed off. A dangerous sort of color.

Nervously, Duo massaged his throat, and croaked, "What for?"

"Hn." Heero returned to his laptop, and started carefully stretching the plastic film over the case.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Yuy! I think I have the right to know, man." Duo started up, angrily. "Shit! You almost throttled the fuck outta me."

Heero didn't respond.

Calmingly, Quatre smiled and spoke in his girlish contralto. "Hey, Duo, do you think you could tell us what else you hear in our voices?"

"Yeah, sure!" Duo grinned, settling down onto the lumpy mattress, and began happily telling each of the anthropologists their life stories. Over the course of the conversation it was revealed that Quatre had twenty-nine sisters, had learned Hebrew illicitly, gone to school in Texas, and, by benefit of a dual citizenship, had survived bootcamp to become a U.S. marine.

Heero was impressed. He'd never been impressed with someone before, and he was impressed with this…this petite cherubic boy. It was unnerving, and he didn't like either of those sensations at all. And, he really didn't like medical anthropologists, but that was for another reason entirely.

On and on, Duo prattled, asking the most inane of questions and getting the most miraculous of answers, "Hm, Hong Kong? Cool. Say your name, again, would you? Neat, that's the dragon clan. Could you give me a list of breakfast foods? That's what I thought. Home schooled. Went to high school in Japan, went to two years in Brooklyn, transferred to England, finished your degree and did an ethnography in Venezuela. Why Venezuela?"

Wufei was startled enough, and he answer the personal question. "Visiting the Yamomano people."

"Why?" Duo leaned back on his heels, pensively contemplating the ceiling.

Wufei savored one word. "Justice."

"Er. Okay." The moment was broken, and Duo's questions moved in crazy circles, spinning concentric circles around Trowa. Apparently, Trowa spoke all Eastern European languages with great fluency, although his native tongue was Russian.

"And, you did spend some time with the Italian mob." Duo nodded, decisively.

"Oh?" Quatre asked, glancing over at Trowa.

Trowa shrugged.

"Yup." Duo answered the question, even though it wasn't directed at him. "I'd guess about six months, maybe a year. I can tell the way you say your ch's."

Curiously, Trowa blinked. Heero tried to remember any ch's in the conversation, and failed utterly.

"You idiots!" Duo laughed, and the sound echoed strangely in their tiny boxlike room. "I have great hearing, Trowa. I heard you call me a chatterbox."

Trowa looked mortified.

And, for some reason, Heero wished that he knew how to snicker. It was a strange thought, and so he pressed himself more deeply into his work.

Bouncing up, Duo stretched until his joints cracked. Wufei, hearing the sound in his sleep, murmured and curled into the wall. It was undoubtedly kinder that the lumpiness of the bed. "Yo, Q-man, you look asleep on your feet. Take the bed."

"Oh, I couldn't possibly…" But, Quatre was nonetheless looking longingly and the dingy mattress.

"I ain't gonna use it." Duo shrugged, and settled onto the floor next to Heero.

So, Quatre settled out to sleep on the bed next to Wufei, and the room was so small, that with Duo and Heero sitting on the floor, Trowa had to crawl beneath the bed to get enough room to lie in. "I hate spiders."

"Am I glad or am I glad that I'm not under there!" Duo jerked his thumb at Trowa, who was already beginning to squirm a little. A small house spider was already crawling through the filaments of his gingery hair, and it looked like some of the cockroaches were thinking of coming out of hiding again.

"Hey, Heero?"

"Hn." Heero supposed it was polite to respond when spoken to.

"How long until the next thingy comes to get us?"

"Three hours and thirty two minutes." Heero checked his infallible internal clock, and fitted some more pieces to his machine.

"Three and a half hours?" Duo whined. "That's like the wrong amount of time to try to do anything. Hell, I've had quickies that were longer than that."

Heero did not even know how to respond to that one.

"How do you like this place, huh? I mean, look at these accommodations. It's real funny, in a not funny way at all, that those corporate ass wipes were practically bending down and grabbing their ankles so I'd take the job, and then they give us this. Where's the fucking five star hotel, man, the Hawaiian girls with easy-access grass skirts. I mean, really, I wouldn't even touch the junk food in this place, and that's saying something. The plane was pretty good, I mean, if it hadn't been, I might've bailed completely. You know, I've got myself a whole system back home, you know. Kit and caboodle. That sort of deal, and so I wouldn't just hop into some plane for nothing. Hey, anyway, you were a good few minutes here before us, and we were all on the same plane. Ninety-seven Cancun from Southwest, with a layover here. We were some of seventeen passengers to get of, and most of them look like political officials who keep their kids here, you know. So, like, how did you get here?"

"Independent transport." Heero grunted, and continued working.

"Dude. That was six whole syllables, man! Hell, I'm a linguist and we're supposed to be the mouthy ones, and even I can manage more than that!" At this point, Heero hoped Duo was joking. He thought he was, but wasn't sure. "So, man, like, what do you think of this whole deal? I think the Q and Tro are down with it, and getting a pretty same snazzy deal as me, but I don't know."

Heero did not know if that was a question, but felt obligated to respond. "Hn."

"Dude, I can totally see why some gorillas would be all over you. It's that delicate British accent in your grunt. Really." He shook his head, and it made the heavy weight of his braid move. "I'm going to nap, okay. Wake us up, will ya, when the time is right, baby?"

"Sure."

It wasn't until eleven o'clock, when Heero pushed aside his outfitted laptop and stretched out beside the braided boy; only then did he realize that he did not know anything about Duo Maxwell at all. The anthropologist had chattered incessantly, filled the air with bright and colorful words, recited and evoked their comrades' life histories, and not spoken a single word about himself beyond name, credentials, and purpose.

Clever, Maxwell. Clever.


	2. Chapter 2: Howard's Beauty

Ratings and Reasons: R, for violence, references to non-consensual sex and child abuse, violations of basic human rights, homosexual love and other adult themes. 

Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters; however, the concept and the plot are of my devising. No profit has been made or will be made from this venture, and no infringement of rights is intended.

Note: All coincidences are purely coincidental; this short story is not meant to infringe or insult any anthropologist anywhere. As I am not acquainted with ethnographers and I have just begun my first anthropology course, all of the anthropological activities are my creation and any passing similarity to established protocol is just that, passing and no more. It is my sincere hope that true anthropologists are more diligent and less self-centered that the characters portrayed.

**Chapter 2: Howard's Beauty**

Of course, the little rickety helicopter, dubbed Bella, was only supposed to carry a maximum of two people. Howard, though, insisted that it would take six just fine. Quatre eyed the harness with polite trepidation, Trowa had backed up, Wufei had rejected the possibility forthrightly, while Duo had laughed maniacally. No one had been sure why.

Using an artful combination of money, intimidation, and stealth, Heero had managed to work a compromise: parachutes from a local tourist skydiving industry and a harness system with release mechanisms. All of them, including Duo, had quickly checked the gear and strapped themselves in.

Howard shook his head at them and gave Bella a resounding tap, which left her ringing like a tin can. Cramming himself into the cockpit, he fired her up, and lifted her off the ground as easily as a dust mote floating into the air.

The ride was long. Heero had a place by the window, so he concentrated on the ground, memorizing the lay of the land and various landmarks from above.

Most of the time, Duo chattered with incessant levity, topics ranging from sex to childish humor and pranks, anecdotes, black humor, pranks and more sex. Heero had never known anyone to use to many words lacking intrinsic meaning to express what was at the heart a meaningless topic. At least bird song had a point. Sometimes, Quatre managed to moderate the conversation, drawing Wufei and Trowa into his rather pointless speculations concerning the nature of their trip and the corporation involved. It would all fall as it fell, and Heero knew the value of waiting. There was not enough room to take his laptop out anyway.

As the sun became low and red in the sky, they touched down in a cleared feiled with neatly cropped grass and an otherwise sculpted appearance. Howard expressed some personal affection for Duo, and indicated that he worked the steam powered junker that worked the natives with trade goods, and he'd be glad to help someone other than the missionaries, who were a bit further south and disliked his whiskey. After they unbuckled and hauled their packs out of the helicopter, Bella lifted off in a whirr of rotaries and they were left with dust in a grand lawn.

"Did you see any houses? Or, well, anything?" Quatre whispered.

It took Heero a moment to figure out that Quatre was addressing him, and then he started a bit, caught himself, and pulled together his reply. "No."

"Shame." Quatre frowned slightly, but with his round cheeks it was more like pouting. "Does anyone want to suggest a way to walk?"

"Up." Trowa suggested. "Rich Europeans build on hills."

"Yes." Choosing a direction, Wufei started moved across the neatly trimmed lawn. There were some fruitless palm trees surrounded by artistic patterns of sand, rocks, and lush flowering shrubbery, but Heero thought that none of the species he had observed so far were native to the area. There were no mosquitoes, and the birds were very quiet.

There was a house of the hill. It look very ante-bellum South, with white verandas and a broad porch with white pillars.

"It's the KKK come back." Duo whispered, laughing. "I don't know who owns this, but I'll bet you that they're white, white, white!"

Heero heard a sound in the bushes, and spun to face it.

"The representative will see you." A voice whispered softly, and the doors to the great building drifted open.

"Damned eerie. And, I didn't sleep with no roaches to meet some fucking representative." Duo grumbled, but took quite concise movements to the broad white steps of the porch. "Damn. Marble, man. I didn't think that they had much of this stuff after the last nuclear war. I mean, not around here."

"I do not like this." Wufei frowned. "It is not honorable for our hosts to speak without showing their faces."

"Okay…" Quatre whispered. "Let's just go and see."

Heero wondered why everyone was whispering, and then he decided not to ask because he didn't know why he hadn't thought to ask that whenever everyone had started whispering. So, he and Trowa walked quietly after the more expressive members of their team, and stepped into the grand old mansion.


	3. Chapter 3: A Perfect Gentleman

Ratings and Reasons: R, for violence, references to non-consensual sex and child abuse, violations of basic human rights, homosexual love and other adult themes. 

Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters; however, the concept and the plot are of my devising. No profit has been made or will be made from this venture, and no infringement of rights is intended.

Note: All coincidences are purely coincidental; this short story is not meant to infringe or insult any anthropologist anywhere. As I am not acquainted with ethnographers and I have just begun my first anthropology course, all of the anthropological activities are my creation and any passing similarity to established protocol is just that, passing and no more. It is my sincere hope that true anthropologists are more diligent and less self-centered that the characters portrayed.

**Chapter 3: A Perfect Gentleman**

A perfect gentleman waited.

A rich abundance of precious mahogany, walnut and ebony inlays were repeated in ever diversifying patterns across the grand floor, and the banisters of the sweeping stairway were carved in elegant patterns, a chaos of vines, and the walls and arches depicted the smooth curves of women peering out of hand-made foliage.

In the middle of the lushness, the perfect gentleman was white. All white ruffles of silk and lace, a white velvet tailed coat, pure white lambskin riding trousers, and white silk sheer stockings and immaculate riding boots. Even his skin was white, and his hair, long and free down his down his back, white. The only color seemed to be his brilliant blue eyes imbedded in the platinum gleam of his mask. "I am the representative of OZ, the Organization of Zeitgeist."

That did not sound good.

"You've gotta be kidding me." Duo muttered to himself. "Jeez."

Wufei frowned, drawing his arms over his chest. "I was contacted by Romafeller."

"Yes." The man commented, and then turned. "Please follow me to the parlor."

So, they did. Heero watched everything very carefully. Wufei was very alert and cautious, while mild little Quatre was looking vaguely worried and Trowa refused any expression but careful neutrality. Of course, Duo was outright rebellious. It was very American of him.

In the parlor, which was a delicate little room with a Victorian atmosphere and a great number of China flowers, there was a tray holding a typical English tea. Small biscuits with chocolate, currents, and almonds were artfully arrayed beside a small arrangement of lemon slices. A small cream pitcher was pressed against the sugar bowl, complete with silver tongs, and the teapot was large and dribbling steam.

Heero wondered if there were servants, or if this was prepared by the gentleman.

Sitting down, the man surveyed them. "Come, now, enjoy yourselves."

But, everyone just stared at the seats. Heero stared at the man.

"Oh, come now. Did I forget to introduce myself by name again?" His laugh was slightly rueful, and very mellifluous. "Oh, I did. You must be edgy because of the so-called mystery around here. I apologize. I am Zechs Marquise, and though I know the names, I do not know the faces."

"I'm Quatre Raberba Winner." Quatre smiled, hesitantly, and held out his hand with a practiced air.

Zechs had to stand up again to shake it. "I see. A blond Arabian."

"Ah, yes." Quatre nodded, shortly. "My mother was a convert."

"I see. Yes, that was quite the scandal?" Zechs murmured, and looked at the rest of them in askance, politely waiting for someone to step forward.

Quatre sat down, but he was still lookingn uneasy.

"Chang Wufei." Wufei bowed, and sat before Zechs could echo the gesture.

"Ah." Zechs didn't seem very happy about this, but he let it pass.

Grinning, Duo flashed the peace sign. "Duo Maxwell, at your service. I run, I hide, but I never tell a lie!"

"So I've heard." Zechs murmured, and looked over at Heero.

It was his cue. So, he grunted his name "Heero Yuy" and sat.

Trowa sat without further promting. "Barton."

"Hm." Zechs looked at the ethnographer with a critical eye. "I saw some pictures of you, when you were younger. Before you attended Yale and Oxford. You've … changed quite a bit over the years, haven't you?"

Trowa just looked at him.

"Ah, well then. Back to business." Zechs sat down, and poured himself a cup of tea. He put two sugars and a lemon in it. "So, so…you want to know the details of our mission, why we're hiring you, the five foremost up and coming anthropologists. Well. Before the nuclear wars, a small group of anonymous scientists put together a very powerful machine. Unfortunately, with the onset of the wars, they were scattered. There is a small village, slightly north of here, that contains the descendents of some of the old lab techs who were unable to escape. We need to find out the location of the base, and more importantly, of the machine."

"That doesn't seem ethical." Quatre commented without malice.

"Anthropologists," Trowa stressed the word, "are not spies."

"It is not like that." Zechs opened his hands in a placating gesture. "It is just that the people are very secretive, very ethnocentric, very culturally correct. There is no way we could get close enough to them without relying on translator who will translate more than words—we need to know customs, etiquette, if you will, in order to negotiate and speak to them properly. Like equals. To share an understanding."

"Still…." Quatre whispered.

"Your costs will be covered, and you will be paid. As long as you are examining their nature, and that can be any facet of them as a people, you will be fulfilling your obligation to us. We will simply wish for a copy of your to-be published work, and then perhaps we can re-negotiate a contract placing you as a consultant for the native people, or some such. But, that is far in the future."

"What sort of machine?" Duo's voice held a measure of excitement. "Why do you want this hunk of junk? It's a century out of date software!"

"Yes." Quatre pressed. "Tell us."

"Well…it was supposed to be a revolutionary breakthrough." Zechs said reluctantly. "A machine of such caliber, such precision, such speed that it would even be able to save…find a way to clean up the atmosphere and screen the radiation."

"Fuck." Duo crossed his arms over his chest. "I can't believe some big bad ass corporation is paying a bunch of skinny dweebs like us to go hunting for a golden goose. Shit, it's more than ridiculous. It's downright incredible. Start playing a kazoo with your ass cheeks, Zechs, because I'll believe that you're Mozart when you hand us the money for this gingerhouse job."

Neatly pulling a pocket pc out of his coat, Zechs turned his little machine on and logged into the company checking accounts. "Give me your account numbers. I'll make the transfer now."

"Damn!" Duo leaned over to see if the pad was genuine. "Fuck! No fucking way, man. You're just going to give us the money. You're not even going to check to see if we're going to get the job done good?"

"It's not like you'll just be able to walk away with it." Zechs said, dryly.

Everyone looked uncomfortable.

Heero quoted his bank account number, and watched Zechs make the deposit with quick movements of his stylus. Heero opened up his laptop, and verified the amounts. It processed in a remarkably short time, and he confirmed that he had received the specified amount. Quickly, he shifted the money into a differing account, and it would eventually be forward, transferred, and squirreled away in locked savings counts, bonds, and certain reliable stocks. A moderate amount would remain liquid, under an alias name at his bank in Switzerland. It was would be virtually untraceable.

After that, the others gave over their numbers, and then used his laptop to check the numbers and transfer the funds to safer accounts. Heero did not like them touching his laptop's keys. It felt invasive. He was a very private person.

"Would you to stay the night?" Zechs asked, selecting a biscuit and setting it on his saucer. "We have quite excellent accommodations and the chef is simply dying to cook for others."

It was very quiet. There were no birds outside.

"Dude man, has like anyone here seen something like those horror films you know the ones that they show at the theaters in the U.S.? I mean, this so feels like a horror film, I mean, the silence and the whole dying comment. How creepy are you anyway, creepy enough for a bad guy with that mask? Not that I am insulting you or anything buddy, because you did just stuff my pockets, pal." Duo grinned. "It was just that you called your chef dying, I mean, really!"

"It's a London expression." Zechs seemed mildly affronted. "I am sorry that I have seemed to incorporate some of their speaking patterns."

"More than that, buddy." Duo said, cheerily. "A helluva lot more than that."

"This does not seem honorable." Wufei said pensively.

"I think that all of us would like to decline your invitation, Zechs. Of course, with our greatest gratitude that you offered." Quatre smiled tactfully. "But the truth is, we are at the top of our field because we follow our passion. Our passion is the people."

"Ah." Zechs stood, and bowed slightly. He said, with a bit of warmth, "There was a reason that we looked into hiring you. You are all at the top in your field. I will respect your decision, and see you to the door."

After a bit more paper work, Zechs Marquise showed them out to through the grandiose mansion, and then pointed toward a gleaming star and instructed them on the cardinal direction and the various landmarks that would lead to the area in which the people were generally sighted. He was regretful to inform them that neither OZ nor Romafeller had any solid idea where the village was, or even if the village was seasonal.

The anthropologists took this with a grain of salt. Sometimes, the field was just like that, and they would be able to slip into the elements and seek out the people like born blood hounds. In order to get as good as they were, and at their age, working like this had to be an instinctual thing.


	4. Chapter 4: Country Camping

Ratings and Reasons: R, for violence, references to non-consensual sex and child abuse, violations of basic human rights, homosexual love and other adult themes. 

Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters; however, the concept and the plot are of my devising. No profit has been made or will be made from this venture, and no infringement of rights is intended.

Note: All coincidences are purely coincidental; this short story is not meant to infringe or insult any anthropologist anywhere. As I am not acquainted with ethnographers and I have just begun my first anthropology course, all of the anthropological activities are my creation and any passing similarity to established protocol is just that, passing and no more. It is my sincere hope that true anthropologists are more diligent and less self-centered that the characters portrayed.

**Chapter 4: Country Camping**

A suitable campsite was found, with adequate protection from wind and rain. It also lacked poisonous things and mosquitoes. By setting down his pack, Heero indicated that he was stopping for the night. Quatre smiled at him, approving his choice, while Duo investigated the perimeter, just in case. Sitting down in the heavy underbrush, Wufei pulled out some rations while Trowa efficiently lit a fire. It was very elegantly done; Heero catalogued the elements of the action within his memory for future reference.

"I'll cook." Quatre offered. "I'm pretty good, really."

"Twenty-nine sisters and you gotta learn something!" Duo agreed, bouncing a little where he stood. "This is so great! Got food! Got fire! Got a beautiful wilderness! Damn fine, really! Hey, anyone want to help me with my hammock?"

"Unnecessary." Trowa informed him. "I brought two pup tents."

"Wow! A sentence!" Striking a pose of surprise, Duo mock-gasped.

"No." Wufei snickered. "That wasn't a sentence, Maxwell."

"Hey, I do so speak in many sentences." Duo protested. "All of the time."

"We gathered that, Duo." Quatre said, blithely, setting up the mess set around the fire to get the rice ready. "You speak a lot. I mean, a lot of languages. Does anyone have any perishables that they'd be willing to donate to the meal?"

"Er, how do you define perishable?" Duo looked into his bag. "I have potato chips, twinkies, those pizza pocket things, beef jerky, some trail mix and God do I ever hate the stuff, and some of those smores granola bars, oatmeal cream pie, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate, hmmm…I remembered my dehydrated beer flavoring."

"That sounds positively vile." Wufei commented.

"Oh, it is! I love it! It really tastes like that really disgusting beer, you know the horrible cheap stuff that doesn't come just from the bottom of the barrel, but it's more like the left over from the good stuff out of the bottom of five barrels. Yeah, it's like that man either. Good stuff."

That was amazing. Heero didn't think that real people talked like that.

"Ew." Quatre looked up, and poured out some water from one of his canisters to hydrate some powdered curry stuff. That also belonged to Wufei.

"Does anyone have empty canisters?" Heero pulled his filter out of his pack, and stood up. "I am willing to seek an acceptable water source and refill."

Several canisters were thrust out at him, and Duo bounced up with a grin. "Dude, can I come? Can I come please? Hey, Q-man, when's dinner going to be ready?"

"About twenty minutes or so." Quatre looked up from where he was trying to get the lumps out of the sauce. "Why?"

"Oh, my stomach is like a timer. It'll know just when to get us back so that we have something hot to shove down the gaping maw of doom." Duo grinned and patted his belly rigorously. "I'll head out with you, kay, Heero? It'll be fun. Male bonding and all of that so excellent jazz."

"Gaping…maw…of doom?" Wufei repeated faintly. Perhaps the fact that they were having to share time, space, and funds with such an idiot was finally sinking in.

"Oh, yeah. Maw of doom. Haven't you ever watched any movies, man?" Duo shook his head. "A lot of the time the entrance to the Underworld, Death, Hades, Hell, etc., is represented as a dark cave or cave-like entrance bearing many stalagmites and stalactites. Very mouth like. Even the Harry Potter books—you can't tell me you never heard of those, man, cause I mean really they were so famous in the twenty first century you would have had to been blind to miss them in history class—yeah, even those books had Death Eaters in them. Many ancient Gods and Goddesses were depicted as devourers of life, constantly hungry for bestowing death. The urge to kill is like a hunger, you know? Ne way, we kill to eat, eat to live, thus gaping mouth of doom, get it? Simple, man, simple."

Very soberly, Wufei said, "You are a very disturbed individual."

"Heh, heh heh. Yeah." Duo stretched and scratched the back of his head. "I guess that I'm just that much more interesting. Don't worry, though, it'll only help us in getting close to the villagers. I'll be like your faithful madman or something. It'll be endearing."

"Right." Trowa said, skeptically, from behind his veil of hair. "I'll get wood."

"The villagers may have a custom of killing or stoning the mad." Heero said thoughtfully. "It is common amongst many cultures to find a cultural solution to prevent the perpetuation of madness."

"Damn." Duo started at him. "You're the one who's a fucking nut, man. Don't take me too seriously. Anyway, with my brand of luck, I'd get let free to suffer through my tortured path of life, and they'd stone you for being witches or something. Ne way, Stone Face, you gonna get water or not?"

"Hn." Heero turned, calculated the direction of deepest slope in relation to the likelihood of runoff from the surrounding hills and bluffs, and went in that direction. He had not fully studied the geological nature of the area, so he did not feel comfortable in searching for springs.

It took them fifteen minutes to find an adequate source. Duo spoke nonstop the entire time, but as he was observant enough to point out several well camouflaged animals and redirections in their path that would improve efficiency, it did not seem like an activity that was detrimental to their progress. After all, they were friendly anthropologists in friendly territory.

Not hostile. Heero had to keep reminding himself of that fact.

It still seemed odd to walk beside someone who was so talkative and managed to say absolutely nothing about what he had done with his life or was intending to do. It was just words, sometimes entire sequences of words lacking innate meaning.

They managed to make it back to camp in five minutes. Duo had been adamant about that, and had begun singing inane jingles in various languages about the importance of several meals a day and a balanced diet. Personally, Heero thought that Duo was not one to speak about balanced diets; at least, the contents of his knapsack did not seem to indicate even a passing thread of interest in any sort of a diet. But, then, Heero knew little of social interaction.

The banter intrigued Heero. He had never heard people who were comfortable with other people, or at least, were pretending to be comfortable. It was a very new experience, and he was satisfied to soak up the nature of amiable conversation concerning various neutral and senseless topics.

"Are you sure you don't want some?" Quatre offered up the remainders at the bottom of the pot. It was likely that he had made the anthropologists take less than their desired share in order that he could continue to tempt Heero.

"No."

"Oh! Me. Can I have some?" Duo begged. "Me, me, me. I'm absolutely famished, and fainting from hunger over here. I love your cooking Q-man and your ingredients, Wu-man. Totally the best food I've had in ages. Please, Cat!"

"Oh, fine." Quatre grumbled good naturedly, and then promptly split up the remainder into four equal parts and interspersed it between all of the anthropologists.

Of course, Duo whined about it incessantly, until something about Heero distracted him and he went into full curiosity mode. "Why are you insisting on eating those repulsive bar thingies?"

"All necessary components to optimum performance." Heero answered.

"Shit, man. What are you, a fucking machine?" Duo threw up his hands in the air, hopelessly. The tin landed in the soft loam of the forest. "No, I've got it. You're a soldier, because you act just like one. I bet you say sir and everything, too. A perfect solider."

"Hn." Heero did not know if this was a compliment or an insult. Was he supposed to reply with a threat or gratitude? Neutral seemed safe.

"Stop bugging him, Duo." Quatre whispered gently. "I'm sure that though he's a bit recalcitrant, he'll open up with time. Just let it be."

"Mother Mary said to me, let it be, let it be! Speaking words of wisdom, let it be. Oh, let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be! Speaking words of wisdom, let it be…" Duo sang, and did a little dance around the fire. "Oh, we should sing! Does anyone know any songs that we all know, and then we sound sing and dance in circles around the fire."

"We are not here to make up native customs." Heero stated.

"Oh, God, you just can't loosen up, can you? I mean, heck, it'd be fun! It could count as one of those getting-to-know you team activities in the business place."

"Ugh." Quatre buried his face in his hands. "Never, Duo. Never."

"That is undignified." Wufei informed him. "I would not subject myself to something of that order."

"Aaw." Duo whined, but he thankfully let it drop. "It would've been perfect with the hydrated beer. Just fun, haven't you ever heard of it. Damn."

"The tents." Trowa pulled out two small stuff sacks, and dropped them onto the forest floor. As both Duo and Quatre had terrible night vision, Heero, Wufei and Trow set up the tents. They were very efficient. Heero decided that Trowa was an acceptable team member. Quatre and Duo, being the most social members, chatted amiably as they cleaned up the mess kit.

"Dude, those things are tiny." Duo stared at the tents.

"Two man." Trowa shrugged. "Three can fit."

"Yeah, but…" Duo shook his head, braid swinging. "I don't know."

Glancing up from his contemplation of the fire, Heero informed them. "I will sleep outside."

"You'll just get…get…crucified by the bugs!" Duo seemed horrified.

Heero shrugged. "I am able to repress specific immune reactions and I am resistant to all blood borne diseases."

"Fuck, what the hell are you?" Duo's eyes were wide. Indigo.

Turning, Heero snapped the strap off of the stuff sack, pulled out his sleeping bag, and began situating it at a decent distance.

"Duo," Quatre whispered. The four were readying their sleeping arrangements, scuttling in and out of the tents and yanking off their clothes. "I don't think what you said to Heero was quite polite."

"Dude, Cat. I don't know you well, and you sure as hell aren't my mother to go lecturing me like Miss fucking Manners." Duo whispered. There was the funny sound of something scraping against tent fabric. Probably that ridiculous braid. "Anyway, don't tell me that you weren't thinking it."

Quatre didn't say anything. Neither did anyone else, and then everyone else fell asleep. Breathing patterns became regular. Fabric rustled as REM caused twitching as tension was released from muscles. Someone muttered subaudibly in Chinese, and someone else whimpered in a high pitched puppy-like sound.

It was the first time that Heero did not go to sleep though he did want to go to sleep. That action was necessary for efficiency. But, he did not even progress through the stages of self-hypnosis. He just stared at the glowing coals; the dark red seemed like the inversion of Duo's eyes and absolutely nothing like his voice, his words.


	5. Chapter 5: The Village

Ratings and Reasons: R, for violence, references to non-consensual sex and child abuse, violations of basic human rights, homosexual love and other adult themes. 

Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters; however, the concept and the plot are of my devising. No profit has been made or will be made from this venture, and no infringement of rights is intended.

Note: All coincidences are purely coincidental; this short story is not meant to infringe or insult any anthropologist anywhere. As I am not acquainted with ethnographers and I have just begun my first anthropology course, all of the anthropological activities are my creation and any passing similarity to established protocol is just that, passing and no more. It is my sincere hope that true anthropologists are more diligent and less self-centered that the characters portrayed.

**Chapter 5: The Village**

It took them another two days to get to the village—during that time, Quatre mainly cooked, Trowa acted as a general handy-man, Heero shot game out of the trees with a small composite crossbow, and Duo acted like a general nuisance. Of course.

Sometimes, no, all the time, Heero wondered why Duo had been invited.

Then he learned the reason.

Suddenly, there was a soft rustle, and they were surrounded. A group of natives were standing in a semi-circle around them, and Heero guessed that it was a protective stance and the village was slightly beyond them. Undoubtedly, if they tried to back up and flee, there would be scouts waiting in the bushes to capture them. He noticed immediately that the natives did not look like the other indigenous peoples of this area. Most of these had blond, red or pale chestnut hair and bright blue eyes that contrasted oddly with their deeply bronzed bodies. It must have been the effect of interbreeding with the lab techs. Also, their clothes seemed to be simplified and minimized forms of Western clothing with some variation around collars and cuffs. Spears were pointed at them.

"Hey, men. Hands out with your palms up!" Duo said cheerfully, and he stepped forward. Quickly, the other anthropologists followed Duo's direction.

The leader of the villagers rattled off a quick string of syllables, some of which sounded completely foreign, and some of which sounded oddly familiar.

"Brilliant!" Duo whispered, bouncing excitedly. "It's just English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and some of the local dialects. This is just great! Absolutely fantastic! A whole new creole!" He began rattling off some syllables, his eyes sparkling with what was undoubtedly charisma.

The leader seemed to consider, and made a hand gesture that caused his men to stand down. There was some grumbling amongst the ranks, as if the men had been looking forward to a fight, but they acceded somewhat willingly. The leader carefully introduced his men, enunciating every syllable.

So, Duo in turn, introduced his fellow anthropologists. Something that he said made all of them crack up into laughter, and hissing snickers. Heero didn't want to know; no, he really did. He was curious.

"Yo, Heero, man, can you get me some trade goods out of my bag?"

"Hn." Carefully, Heero opened up the knapsack and was greeted with the sight of unmitigated chaos.

"Um, three fishhooks from the bottom right pocket. Don't worry about your fingers really, they're in a case. And, hm, let's have some tobacco from the side pouch and some glass beads from the left below the fishhooks."

Very carefully, Heero handed the goods over and watched Duo jabber for a moment. Soon, the goods were off their hands and they were being carefully escorted to the middle of the village. Chattering excitedly, boys, girls, and women came out to greet them, along with some of the older women and men. Somehow, Duo managed to field all of the questions with remarkable ease. Especially for someone who had just figured out the basis of a language, but had never actually spoken it.

All of the other anthropologists looked just as uncomfortable as Heero felt, and were carefully listening for phrases and words that would help them pick the language up more quickly.

That night, they were invited to dine with Piop'l—that's what they called themselves, and the anthropologists thought that this was a bastardarization of the English world, "people." They ate well, meat, leaves, tubers, and some thick fleshy flowers that tasted very sweet. Heero approximated the crowd to be at slightly over two hundred people—large for a village of this nature, but too small to be the singular source of genetic material. Contact with neighboring villages was an obvious answer.

Over the course of the night, Duo learned that there were four people who led the village and upon whom the village decisions depended: the leader, who was more of a general and head hunter, the shaman who mediated conflicts and worked with the supernatural, the wisewoman who worked as domestic supervisor and healer, and the storyteller, who was a combination of babysitter and jester. All four quietly spoke to Duo over the course of the evening's entertainments.

Some of the men began to tell hunting stories with grandiose pantomimes, and then the women left to clean up for the night. It looked like that they were going to put the children to bed and clean up a bit.

As the least physically fit of the group, Quatre was nodding off, knocking against Trowa periodically and waking up when he did.

"Accomodations?" Trowa asked, gesturing at the blond.

"No, not yet. They've argued it over a bit, but right now it stands that they don't know what to make of our kinship ties, and can't decide where it would be best to put us without making a ruckus. It seems like they're mulling over the idea of handing us over an empty house tonight, but that they don't know if that would be hospitable without women to take care of us. And, they're worried that it isn't in good repair."

"Take it." Trowa said, softly. "We need a discussion before sleeping."

"Er. Um, I…well, I'll take that offer, but…" Duo rolled his eyes, and tried to explain. "You see, it's the kids and the women who have just left. If we left now…"

"We are men." Wufei stated, crossing his arms over his chest and staring into the firepit that dominated the center of the village. Oddly enough, it was call the CPU. Not even Duo had figured that one out. Yet.

Duo snickered. "Yeah, well, little short dweeby fifteen year old genius men…but, still, we really can't leave yet. I mean, there is the whole respect smishkadoodle."

"And, you call yourself a linguist…" Wuefei shook his head.

"What?" Duo grinned, glancing around as if he was looking for someone else to take his blame.

"Huh?" Quatre started, jerking upright. "What's what?"

"Nothing, Q-man." Duo shrugged him off.

Immediately, Quatre began dozing again. He looked particularly young in the firelight, as it made the worry lines that generally marred his forehead disappear, and in the humidity, his hair was curling slightly.

So, then anthropologists managed to stay up. Some time later, the women came back into the circle and the wisewoman shooed the men away, and sent her apprentice to show us to the empty house. Duo waved off their concerns about the twig and foliage house being leaky, and spread a tarp over the top. All of them pulled out their sleeping bags, and situated them around the perimeter of the house. Somehow, Heero found himself placed between Duo Maxwell and Quatre Raberba Winner, the two most talkative members of the expedition. It was not pleasing.

"Uh, so…" Quatre blinked, looking a bit more alert than he did a few minutes ago, and then he asked softly, "What are we going to here? How are we going to tackle this thing?"

"I will create genealogies." Heero volunteered. It seemed as close as he could get to physical anthropology in this situation. Perhaps he would be able to trace back the patterns of inheritance to the original technicians and villagers.

"Good." Quatre smiled. "How about you, Duo?"

"Yeah, I'll be working overtime this time around." Duo grinned, flipping his braid back over his shoulder. It was still very neat, but Heero had never seen him take it down and he briefly wondered where Duo found the place and the time. "I'll work on teaching you guys the lingo, and I'll do some old-fashioned interviews. My work'll focus on the usual, really. Death."

"Okaaay." Quatre blinked, and then looked over at Trowa.

"I will focus on assimilation." He looked down, his face shadowed. "I will record rituals, ritualistic behavior, behaviors, and I will record the village layout and the nature of the surrounding area."

"And," Wufei nodded to himself. "I will work on tracing the cultural and physical traditions relating to the original melding of the lab technicians and the villagers."

"Cool." Duo whispered. "This is going to be really great!"

"I really look forward to working with you guys." Quatre whispered, slumping down and shuffling deeper into his sleeping bag. "Most of the time I've had to work with University students who think I'm just a kid, or older anthropologists who treat me like a grandkid. I'm really tired of being condescended, because I'm a sight smarter than all of them anyway. It'll be good fun to finally have some contact with my peers."

"Yes." Wufei agreed. "It will be good to work with men as strong as I am; in other expeditions, I worked only with my inferiors. The weak should not work."

Quatre had already curled up into a little lump in his sleeping bag so that only his golden head showed, and was making a small whistling sound.

"Ne way, it'll be a complete blast, so let's go to bed already and snatch some zs out of this tropical air." Duo cut everyone off, and flopped down, tucking his braid out of the way. Squiggling around, he finally managed to turn his entire sleeping bag into something as twisted as twine, and then tie it into a pretzel and curl up in the middle of the knotted lump, somehow in a fetal shape despite the fact that his limbs were completely akimbo. It was an intriguing feat.

The way Trowa sprawled on his side allowed his bangs to flop to the floor, and Heero was almost surprised to see that he possessed a second eye, and Wufei even slept stiffly, as if it was below his dignity to relax into mortal sleep. So, Heero stayed up for a few moments, watched his new comrades sleep, and then finally settled onto his back, put his arms at his sides, and willed himself into sleep.


	6. Chapter 6: First Finds

Ratings and Reasons: R, for violence, references to non-consensual sex and child abuse, violations of basic human rights, homosexual love and other adult themes. 

Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters; however, the concept and the plot are of my devising. No profit has been made or will be made from this venture, and no infringement of rights is intended.

Note: All coincidences are purely coincidental; this short story is not meant to infringe or insult any anthropologist anywhere. As I am not acquainted with ethnographers and I have just begun my first anthropology course, all of the anthropological activities are my creation and any passing similarity to established protocol is just that, passing and no more. It is my sincere hope that true anthropologists are more diligent and less self-centered that the characters portrayed.

**Chapter 6: First Finds**

The wisewoman's apprentice was hanging around, waiting for the men to finish their breakfast. She had been sent over with wooden bowls filled with a sweet mush of roots and some smoked fish, and she was also kind enough to help them get a fire started so that they could brew some cowboy's coffee. Quatre, apparently the only morning person in the bunch, although Heero considered himself to be indifferent to such things, was chirping cheerily at nothing in particular.

"Will you shut the fuck up?" Duo snarled, from where he was hovering eagerly over the steeping coffee. "What the kind of fucking Arabian are you? You drink damned tea in the morning."

Looking hurt, Quatre slowly inhaled the scent of his tea. "It's exotic."

"Weirdo." Duo grunted, and looked over at the girl, asking her something in the villager's tongue. It sounded remarkably like, "Can I drink it yet? How about now?"

The girl replied firmly with a negative, even though she had never brewed coffee before, it was clear to everyone sitting there that it was too hot.

"Aww, fuck. It would be worth getting my tongue burned." Duo snatched the pot away from the fire, and poured himself a cup and promptly gulped it down. Then, he grabbed his canister of water, and gulped that down. "Hot! Hot! Hot! Hot!"

The wisewoman's apprentice was laughing.

And, Trowa quietly poured himself a cup and wrapped his hands around it as he waited for it to cool. "Hey, Duo, ask about bathing."

"Ugh, let me get my recorder. Jeez, what a way to wake up." Stumbling over to his backs, he jabbered at the girl and then paused.

She made a sound of curious agreement. "Si, ya ya."

"Cool, we've got an informant." Triumphantly, he pulled forth a digital recorder and pushed the record button and asked a question.

She answered as clearly as she could, frowned a little, and amended something that she said, and then smiled a little and finished answering the question.

After that, Duo asked a few more questions, and Wufei finished his breakfast and his tea, and then Quatre collected the bowls cheerfully. After the girl finished up with Duo's questions, she took the plates and left.

"Well, Wu-man, we got some of our info." Duo grinned. "You see, they boil everything here to get rid of evil spirits. All bathing water, and drinking water, and they only defecate and urinate downstream of the areas that they collect water from."

"Evil spirits, hm?" Wufei said, thoughtfully and handed his mess cup over to Quatre, who carefully dried it off and packed it away. "I wonder if these people are still susceptible to native diseases?"

"I doubt it." Duo shrugged. "I bet the lab techs were, though."

After they secured their things, they each went off in their own directions. Heero took a recorder with him as well as a camera, and began making notes in his pda on the nature of family dynamics. It seemed that the village was primarily composed of nuclear families, and that a few families contained two wives with a great age difference. He could not yet determine the nature of inheritance or what determined who took care of parents, but he made copious numbers of notes nevertheless.

Several groups of children followed him as he worked, and it was somewhat distracting, all the more so because he couldn't quite understand him, but the words were right at the edge of his comprehension. A lot of the women stopped what they were doing when he came by, as well, and that did not help. And, most of the men seemed to be gone. The disturbance made it easy to doubt the accuracy of his notes.

"Yo, Heero!" Duo shouted from across the track that connected the groups of woven houses. "Yo, you seen the guys?"

"No." Heero shrugged. "Why?"

"We should have a conference. I found out something really interesting about this whole thing." Duo bounced over, and wrapped his arm around Heero's shoulders.

Heero stiffened at the contact, but Duo did not take the hint.

"Oh, there they are!" Duo babbled happily, and waved them over. The wisewoman and her apprentice were walking next to Trowa, and he was listening to them with a look of intense concentration on his face.

They all went back to their little house, and sat down in a small circle around their packs. The wisewoman brought out some meat and food, and they ate gratefully while she talked. Sometimes, Duo would interject comments and questions, but he was actually remarkably good at listening. Satisfied, the wisewoman finally sat back and her apprentice was impatiently elbowed back.

"Well, some of the older women are going to come over later today and repair our little house and Rashid, the leader of the hunters, is going to lend us some of his extra stuff, like skins and a door. Dinner is always at the center of the village, and we'll be expected to show up there when it gets dark." Duo sighed, and looked around. "Well, boys, aside from all that fun stuff, we've got a problem."

"A problem?" Quatre asked.

"Yeah, man. Have you noticed that the natives tend to go around in pairs?"

"Yes." Trowa said, quietly.

"Well, it's a tradition around here to take a partner, generally of the same sex, as a sort of back up against raiders, when adolescence is reached." Duo combed his fingers through his bangs nervously.

"Ah." Wufei said. "We are five."

"Yeah, that is so exactly completely the essence of our problem, man."

"It is no problem." Wufei shrugged. "I will tell the truth—the only one who could ever be my partner is dead, and I am in mourning."

Duo blinked. "Okaaay. I'm sure that there must be contingencies for that sort of thing here. I think. Anyway, I claim Sir Stone Face over here. The kiddies just adore him you know, and his social skills give him immeasurable grace!"

"Hn." Heero didn't know what to say.

Quatre glanced sort of shyly at Trowa. "So that means we…"

Oddly, Trowa ducked his head. "Yes."

Smiling slightly, in a way that made his very blue eyes shine, Quatre nodded and then looked over the team. "I guess since we'll be working in pairs now, we'll have to change some of our tasks around. Duo's work will blend well with Heero's—he can get together the data base and work out relationships as Duo does the interviews. Trowa and I are more experienced at ethnography, so we will work with the people, record observations, set up interviews, and such. Wufei, try to tackle the shaman, to get your traditional tilt. I get the idea that some of the old myths around here could have true physical significance."

"Damn, what a game plan, Q-man!" Duo grinned, and whistled. A few of the natives, standing outside of the door listening to them, jumped a little and giggled. Duo exchanged easy banter with them, most of which was infuriatingly edging along the borders of Heeor's understanding. He then turned to the wisewoman and her apprentice, spoke to them concerning the new situation, and apparently, begged them for patience.

"Right, I told them that they'd care to hang a bit longer, and we'd get some for q and a 'round here done up right!" Duo grinned, and bounced where he was excitedly. "So, yeah, probably should tell ya 'bout the grammer thereabouts!

Heero's recorder was on, but he decided to take notes on his pda to reiterate the developing neural pathways and thereby facilitate maximum assimilation.

"So, okay, it's like this. You know the lexicon is primarily of English, Spanish, Chinese and Japanese origin, with some local bits mixed in between." He played with his hair, a contemplative gesture. "So, if you got them down, ya got this down. Well, maybe not that in fact, but you know, all the words are like composites, you know like strongly also accented, differing connotations, that jazz. So forth, so on.

"Um, ne way, grammar'll be the hardest for all ya to get. Completely local, like totally. Some of it's based in word order. Let's see. Subject always goes in the center of sentences, adjectives when describing nouns in a prepositional phrase always go in front of the preposition, but otherwise go after the noun that they're describing. Adverbs are seldom used but usually in the front, and verbs go just about anywhere shape or form you can stick 'em. Oh, except never next to the subject. If you stick a verb next to the subject it seems to intensify it in a crude or lewd manner, like with the equivalent of changing the verb from meaning something like "sleeping" to "fucking" and from "scratching" to "scratching your genitals" and "made a mistake" to "screwed that up" and from "pooping" to—"

"Maxwell." Wufei said wearily. "We get the point."

"Right. Okay." Duo paused, in thought. "Er, yeah. Totally fucked the flow, man, totally lost it. Now, where was I? Yeah. That's about it, folks!"

"Duo." Trowa's tone held a world of significance in it.

"Well, we have people to see." Cheerily, Quatre turned and made his way out of the house, with Trowa followed at his heels like a dark jungle cat.

The wisewoman laughed something, and her apprentice made a startled sound, and then laughed as well.

Immediately, Duo's attention focused on them, and he worked on asking questions and listening very intently. Sometimes, he would blink as if startled at what he heard, or say something in an appreciative, humble sort of tone. It was very different from how he addressed his fellow anthropologists.

They asked him something, and he suddenly grasped his braid as if they had threatened to burn it off his head. He explained something, with unusual terseness, and only relaxed when the apprentice started a good natured argument with the wisewoman about something. Eventually, Duo gave in by joining in.

Once a few of the lurkers outside of the doorway felt comfortable enough to come in, the wisewoman and her apprentice left. Most of them were prepubescent and some were older women who were obviously keeping a judicious eye out. A lot of that had to do with watching Duo's every gesture, and peering over to see what Heero was fiddling with.

Heero had pulled up a text on linguistics, flash scanned it, and set up a system to differentiate words and syllables into Romanized lettering to facilitate the process of transcribing the voice records into written form. Of course, all of the transcripts would be translated later, once Heero had gained a better grasp of the tongue.

"Yo, man, I'm about wrapping it up. The kiddos have left, and so have the hens, but Cat and Tro haven't shown up yet." Duo spoke softly, almost like he didn't want to startle Heero when he was concentrating.

"Ah." Heero blinked. "I have assembled a Romanized system of recognizable syllables in order to facilitate the creation of a transcript. End recording and download data." He held out his hand.

"Oh, right!" Duo pushed the stop button, and handed the recorder over, letting Heero deal with all of the cables.

As the sound bytes downloaded onto his hard drive, Heero created an alternative form of the file naming software that would include the time, date and duration of recording as informational tags, in addition to the possible file name variations. He went over it, tweaked it, corrected a few lines, and then installed it. After downloading his recordings, both visual and audio, he restarted his computer and watched the new system take effect. It was a pleasurable sensation.

Then, in a few terse terms, he wrote the first of his mission logs.

Duo chuckled maniacally, and so Heero looked at him. The linguist seemed to be scribbling illegible scrawls into a ratty black leatherwork journal, with gold edging. It seemed reminiscent of…a popular religious text, Heero decided. It held no informative gold embossing on the spine or over, though there seemed to be an impress of the classical sign indicating a poisoned water source.

"Downloading logs would increase efficiency." Heero offered.

Startled, Duo blinked up at him, regained his aplomb, and grinned, "Uh, man, thanks! I really mean that! But, no. My baby pc's got all the punch of a trained kick-boxing kangaroo, and I log all my crapped stuff ala old school."

Heero did not understand. Perhaps, with his supreme grasp of language, Duo was simply attempting to confuse him with obscure cultural references, or perhaps, Heero lacked the necessary enculturation in order to understand his terminology.

"Heh, you know what they told me? That we had the storm cloud relationship, and like lightning and thunder, we love, fight, and need each other to work. Sounds mighty fine, don't it?" Duo kept on going before Heero could think of a reply or voice one. "They said that Trowa and Quatre are like a kitten chasing it's tail, unaware that it is a necessary part of its body. What do you make of that? Do you think our buds are going to try to knock boots or some such?"

…knock boots? Something of his confusion must have shown on his face.

"Ah, God, Heero, fuck. As in, have male on male sexual relations. Ya think?"

Oh, that? Heero hadn't known that two men who were not using sexuality as a domination technique could perpetrate sexual acts for mutual gratification. It was food for thought. "No. Any type of personal relations should be kept separate from our work in order to further group harmony and to refrain from actions that could incite the populace."

"Jeez, Heero, you are such a little bitch." Duo whined, and flopped down onto the floor so that he could rummage through his bag. "I was just thinking about it."

"Hn." Heero hooked up earphones, increased the playing speed of the clip to match his average typing speed within one standard deviation, and began typing. Duo, meanwhile, was setting up a hammock and pulling out random pieces of junk that had found a way into his bag. A lump of battered of Japanese manga were thrown on the floor, next to the junk food, rolled up wrinkled clothes, and trade goods.

Trowa and Quatre limped in tiredly after that, followed by Wufei. Once Heero informed him of his idea, they handed over their recordings and notes for download, which caused Duo to give in and let Heero download his "formal" notes from the pda.

Vaguely energetic, Quatre unpacked some of his things, and then cleaned up Duo's and told everyone. "Did you know that Trowa used to work with a circus? Isn't that cooool?"

Heero blinked.

"Working with nomads suits my nature." Trowa said, quietly. He was simply leaning against a study pole of the house, and watching the proceedings mysteriously.

Pausing, Quatre sighed, "Hm….I always wanted to run away with the circus."

Startled, Wufei looked at him. "What is wrong with you?"

"A narcotic inclusion test." Trowa said dryly. "I am unaffected."

"I! Am!" Quatre sang out, paused thoughtfully, and added. "Fine!"

Saving his work, Heero opened a new doc and asked. "Note comparison?"

"Yeah, that'd be good." He did a rough summary of what he'd learned, which wasn't much considering how many people had talked to him. He was pretty sure that a lot of them were just making up wild stories about themselves, trying to amuse the anthropologists for one reason or another. Truth would come with trust, and that was a matter of time.

"Actually, I'm surprised you got them to trust us so fast." Quatre said thoughtfully, and then grinned. "Thanks, Duo! You're the best!"

"Ugh, yeah." Duo blinked. "Sure, Q. No prob."

"I'm so glad that I can work with ya'll!" Quatre gushed.

Even Heero winced, and Wufei looked downright irate as he muttered, "Onna."

"Ne way, I think the wisewoman felt sorry for us bachelors ne way, so it wasn't a big deal. All her doing." Duo waved it off, and then looked suddenly worried. "Hey, is this…do you guys think that it's supposed to be like this? I mean, I've never been out on the field before really, so…"

Trowa shrugged. "It's fine."

"My reading suggests that all anthropologists encounter different situations and must formulate extremely different, and still ethical as well as professional, personal responses." Wufei shrugged. "The field seems somewhat subjective."

"Yeah, subjective." Quatre agreed. "I'm subjective right now."

"Give him water." Heero suggested.

"It couldn't hurt." Trowa muttered, and pulled out a water bottle. Happily, Quatre took the offering and began sucking on it.

Duo was staring at him intensely. "I really want to figure out what that stuff was."

"I will point it out." Trowa replied, though he was still paying and inordinate amount of attention to the little blond boy at this side.

All of them set to writing, recording, and sorting their various information so that they could get done as quickly as they could, and then wander the village and familiarize themselves a bit more before dinner.


	7. Chapter 7: The Past

Ratings and Reasons: R, for violence, references to non-consensual sex and child abuse, violations of basic human rights, homosexual love and other adult themes. 

Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters; however, the concept and the plot are of my devising. No profit has been made or will be made from this venture, and no infringement of rights is intended.

Note: All coincidences are purely coincidental; this short story is not meant to infringe or insult any anthropologist anywhere. As I am not acquainted with ethnographers and I have just begun my first anthropology course, all of the anthropological activities are my creation and any passing similarity to established protocol is just that, passing and no more. It is my sincere hope that true anthropologists are more diligent and less self-centered that the characters portrayed.

**Chapter 7: The Past**

Suddenly excited, with a manic gleam in his eyes, Duo turned on them and whispered tersely. "Wufei, listen up, man! He says that he's going to use an ancient dialect to tell the most ancient story of the Piop'l. This is right up your alley!"

And, to everyone's shock, the shaman began to sing in lilted and perfectly recognizable English:

"A light as bright as war boiled the land into existence, and the light became the brother sun and the sister moon, who always chase the other's reflection in the sky using only the hope of companionship to fuel their eternal solitude."

The crowd whispered reverently. "Unrequited love is betrayal."

And the shaman held up his arms, his body swaying to the time of pipe music as if each syllable pulled the cords that united his being: " Some light lived and landed to dance as stars in the crater of the sky, but most light died and fell like ashes on the land."

"Holocaust." The villagers whispered, savoring the smooth syllables, elongating the vowels and then snapping out the t from between their teeth.

"Animals sprung up from ashes rubbing into ashes, but we were different."

A heavy drum beat sprung up. All of us started.

"Hu-man." The villagers said.

"Sir, the star who does not need to dance, who made the force of all natural things natural, touched the ugliest ashes with water and shaped statutes but he was so great his touch left sparks in our eyes and in our breasts and in our groins."

Very softly, the villagers whispered, "Dust to dust."

"So, it is that we come from the worst as the unintentional best, the only beings that are brother to the celestial and the base, the only beings on the land holding light bound in earth and life bound in death."

"A secret."

The anthropologists sat, stunned. Unable to compute a cultural gift of this magnitude, a gift that furthered them so, they were completely silent.

Of course, it was the spunky apprentice who elbowed Duo.

"Ow!" Standing, and poking everyone else so that they would stand to, Duo lend them through the signs and the words of gratitude. A few of the villagers laughed when Wufei spoke with a Chinese intonation, and when he scowled, they laughed harder. A man's pride did seem to be a common concept. But, they grinned at each other, shouted heckles, and then everyone sat down, at ease.

Some stories and casual talk was exchanged. A boy brought out a little flute and played a melody for some of the children. Heero turned on his own recorder and went over to listen to the quiet tune. It was plaintive, and in a minor, hushed key. It seemed to be the echo of in the song the "Piop'l origin" as Duo had dubbed it. Heero found it oddly…disturbing, but not unpleasant. He just did not understand music.

After a while, the women wandered off, the babies settled in, and some of the men jostled good-naturedly, apparently showing each other up on some good wood for new spears. Heero found it worrisome, but it did not seem to bother Duo, who diligently asked questions about the process and selection of excellent spear making and hunting. But, Duo got into the process, and soon Quatre, Trowa, Wufei and Heero were all holding lengths of wood, sniffing them, and testing them for resiliency and strength. Rashid showed them how to strip the bark off, and then they set aside their speaks-in-making along with the other men, so that the wood could season.

After the oldest grandfather finished telling his most rambunctious story—it had giants in it—all of the villagers, and even the anthropologists, drifted back to their houses in pairs.

"Damn, this place is starting to look fine!" Duo posed proudly at the entrance of the small house, and grinned around. It just looked to Heero like they needed to straighten up. "I think I'm going to call it King's Cot."

"I thought you were American." Quatre blinked.

"Er, huh?" Duo blinked back.

"Only the British name their houses, Duo." Wufei rolled his eyes, exasperated. "And you are an American."

"I think the Scottish do too!" Duo grinned. "Besides, it just seemed right to name my first house, really! It's awful cool, and it even as my hammock in it!"

"Your first house." Wufei said skeptically.

Flatly, Duo replied. "Your dead partner."

Heero tensed.

"Okaaaaaaaay!" Quatre beamed, and tapped Heero on the arm. "How about we clean up this mess, and get our records done before we go to sleep."

"I will help." Trowa volunteered, and automatically began tidying the small area, rearranging Duo's knickknacks, and the various gear that had been pulled out of packs and stowed in random intervals.

"The recording devices?" Heero queried, setting up his laptop and the cords.

"Here." Wufei handed them over. "I got a visual on the story telling."

"Good."

Downloaded the various records, Heero then wrote up his report on the day. Duo had backed down, out of his strange anger, and was scribbling maniacally in his black bound journal. Wufei was carefully banking the fire, and scrubbing out the mess kit with biodegradable soap. Quatre set some water boiling, and made them all Lemon Ginger tea. With the tasks of the night wrapped up, they all sat in their sleeping bags, sipping tea and staring at the shapes the smoke made as it wafted out of the hole in the ceiling.

"How did your time out with the big men go, Q?" Duo queried.

"Well, I think the hunters think that I'm a bit of a pansy, but I'll show them that I'm a bit more than I look." Quatre grinned, and it had a bite the bullet edge to it that made Heero suddenly remember that Quatre spoke like a marine. "They'll accept me."

"No doubt, dude." Duo grinned. "I bet you kicked marine ass!"

"Heh. Yeah, my father hated that." Quatre grinned. "He's really religious, you know. Thou shalt not kill. It's not like I'm…I'm a…"

"Hard ass?" Duo delicately suggested.

"Yeah. I'm not like that." Quatre said. "I believe in compassion, but I also believe that there are causes that simply must be fought for, and that there are times that we have to kill in order to promote a greater good, a greater compassion."

A contemplative silence filled King's Cot, and Heero thought about causes. He thought that he knew a lot about causes, but he had always been a part of a cause, and had never…had never felt that…passion. That zealotry.

"I can hold my own in a fight." Trowa said suddenly.

"Yeah?" Duo blinked.

"I am honored to be amongst men who will fight for what is just." Wufei said stiffly. "Our accordance is strong."

"So it is." Quatre said. "I mean, I'm glad that we share the same ethics, pretty much. It'll keep things simple."

"Yeah…" Duo slurped at his tea, and made a face at Quatre.

Playfully, Quatre screwed his face up and stuck his tongue out at Duo, and then giggled. It was hard to believe that this cherubic, childish teenager had fought and won special training in the U.S. army.

Swirling his tea, Trowa looked into the metal cup contemplatively.

Wufei looked like he wanted something more tasty, like jasmine or green, as opposed to the English stuff that Quatre liked to so much.

"So, dude, Trowa, I mean, you're so completely quiet, I just don't understand why you'd choose a career about talking to people. I mean, why man?"

Smiling slightly, so that his green eyes sparkly slyly, Trowa murmured, "The greatest function of speech is listening."

Duo blinked, and looked at everyone to see if he was the only one who didn't understand. What Trowa had said made perfect sense to Heero, and Wufei was looking satisfied and contemplative even as Quatre nodded slightly. Yes, Duo was the only one who didn't seem to get it.

"So, who did you work under, then? I know that it's illegal for most of us kids to go out without supervision of a guardian or something—though they make an exception for Romafeller, go fig—so you had to have your "in" on the field, you know." Duo paused, expectantly, realized he hadn't asked a question, and pressed, "So, who was it?"

"Dr. Es and the Bartons recruited me." Trowa finally answered softly

Odd. How could the Bartons recruit him if his last name was Barton? It didn't make any sense to Heero, but it could had just been him. After all, he was more interested in gorillas than humans.

"Dude, man." Duo exclaimed. "I thought your last name was Barton!"

Inscrutable, Trowa just regarded him.

So, Heero was not the only one.

"Well, Duo," Quatre turned the attention aside from Trowa, "Since you seem to be bursting with questions tonight, how about you? Who was your in?"

"Heh, I was under Doc. Gee, as in Golly Gee!" Duo grinned and set his hammock swinging wildly. "Funny story really. You see, he was all great and everything, but just trying to hitch it back to wherever and this traveling salesman dude who I was stowing with totally like picked Doc. Gee up in the U-haul and when we were hauling ass, Doc. Gee trumped up his translation junk and I corrected this thing. So, he ended up thinking I was just the right sort of kid, the handy kind, and before you know it, here I am, gliding through a free ride. How's about you, Q?"

"I worked under Instructor Ha' as in the letter of the Arabic alphabet." Quatre shrugged a little, and toyed with the edges of his sleeping bag. "I think my father hired, probably originally to examine the company an later to spy on my as my studies progressed past his wished. It was a dead giveaway—my father named all of his favorites after letters."

"That's freakish."

"I don't understand the reasoning behind that." Wufei admitted.

Shrugging, Quatre snuggled deeper into his sleeping bag, and said. "Neither do I."

Quietly, Wufei actually volunteered. He was the first to do so. "Master O was a great man, and I was honored to have him as my teacher."

"Oh!" Duo bounced up, and the hammock made funny jerky motions, "Wasn't he the one who did that neat essay on the manner in which martial artists cope with death and talk about it! God damn, that was one fine bit of work."

"Yes." Wufei said darkly. "It was."

"Hm." Quatre considered out loud. "Was his name really O?"

"O, the connotations." Duo said lecherously, waggling his eyebrows.

Wincing at the pun, Trowa covered his eyes and Quatre giggled. Heero tried to figure out what the connotations were, and decided to research it once he returned to a part of the globe containing multiple satellite servers.

Wufei actually snickered. "No, that wasn't his real name. O was actually the initial of his middle name, Oscine. Perhaps, he thought that songbird name of his was too weak. You wouldn't believe me if I told you his first name."

"Tell us!" Quatre pressed.

"Nightingale."

"No way." Duo groaned, covering his indigo eyes with his hand. "No fucking way. No way, man. And I like worshipped that essay too! Ruined!"

"What was his surname?" Trowa asked.

"Avian."

Even Heero snorted, and Trowa was outright laughing. Quatre seemed to be choking on his tongue, and Duo had fallen out of his hammock but was laughing to hard to free the foot that was stuck up through the mesh and into the air. It took a while for everyone to calm down. A moment later, when the wisewoman's apprentice peered into see if they were all right, they broke out into laughter again. It took nearly fifteen minutes for Duo to calm himself long enough to get his foot out of the hammock so that he could climb back up again.

A sweet relaxing silence fell over the house back with the rich more-familiar jungle sounds, and the noises of a village settling into sleep. It was…comfortable.

"How about you, Heero?"

"Hn." Heero looked away, but everyone was still just watching him expectantly, so he felt oddly obligated to speak. He was the only one who had not contributed. "I was raised by Dr. Jay. He may have published under the name Morior."

"No fucking away, that creep? Damn, Heero. He raised you?" Duo was angry.

"Yes." Heero paused and wondered at that, so he queried, "Why do you ask that?"

Everyone was ominously quiet.

"It's just…just that…." Quatre began slowly, his voice small and unsure, but he began gaining strength and warmth. "I know my first textbook, my beginning textbook, had a section on ethics in it. You know, what an anthropologist should do and what he shouldn't, that sort of thing. And…Jay Morior was cited as a negative example of professional behavior. Actually, the negative example. As in, the negative example."

"Hn." Heero reflected. "What infraction?"

"Well, every infraction, really. Over a hundred counts of murder one and I can't really remember the remainder of the specific charges." Quatre admitted, and then paused uncomfortably. "I'm sorry. I mean, I wouldn't want to insult someone who has been important to you…"

"No." Heero felt the urge to deny this assumption, but he could not understand his motivation for doing so. Yet, Jay had played an important part of his formation, but he was not a…guiding force.

"Oh…" Quatre let out a puff of air. "Yes."

"The pursuit of truth is important." Wufei said, impatiently. "Your mentor wrote detailed and accurate journals of his experimentations. All records of his actions indicate blatant disregard, disrespect, and dishonor of the universal human rights, human decency, and the human capacity of anthropology. In his lustful pursuit of ultimate knowledge, he committed murder, illegal genetic splicing and testing, human cloning, enslaved, and various acts of torture and mutilation. He was also being tried for high treason, money laundering, trafficking, drug use and dealing, malpractice, gross abuse and negligence. I believe that many of his actions otherwise violated international laws and treaties."

It was silent. Heero thought that he was supposed to say something, but Jay had never trained him in social etiquette.

Of course, Duo being Duo, he managed to diffuse it. "Fuck! I wonder how he had enough time to commit all of those crimes! I mean, damn man, what the hell? Where did he get it all? Was it like a full time occupation? I bet that's not something you'd see at one of those college career fairs: recruiting sociopathic anthropologists, come here for your fun four years!"

Somehow, uneasy laughter made all of them relax, and then they sat there in the quiet again. No one seemed quite sure where to pick up.

"It was pretty high profile." Quatre whispered as if he was giving Heero some sort of out on the subject. "Pretty sensationalized. I didn't really keep track of it."

"Yeah." Duo agreed, swinging in his hammock. "I remember, 'cause I was real little at the time. Like five or something and my friends used to tease me and little 'uns about being kidnapped by old Morior and kilt. Whatever happened to him?"

"I don't know." Quatre whispered, glancing over at Heero. "One day, he just…just vanished. Just disappeared."

"He died, July 2138." Heero stated.

So quiet. A baby was crying across the village, and there was the sound of animals snuffling through the underbrush. A bird shrieked. The mosquitoes whined.

Softly, Wufei muttered something that sounded like, "Good."

"Hey…" Duo casually leaned over, and landed with a thump on Heero. "Heero, you okay? Seriously."

"Hn." Heero grunted.

"Fine." Duo whispered back. "See if I care."

But that night, after the torch had been dimmed and Wufei had begun muttering in Chinese and Trowa was making up for his earlier silences with a monotonous snore and Quatre was beginning to squeak in his sleep, only then did Duo startle Heero.

Pulling his sleeping bag down of his hammock, curling up against Heero just enough to limit the usual set of his limbs, Duo sighed and whispered quietly, "Oh, Heero, damn. I had no fucking clue. No clue.

"Oh, my Jesus, have mercy on us, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell. Take all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of thy mercy. Amen."


	8. Chapter 8: Participant Observation

Ratings and Reasons: R, for violence, references to non-consensual sex and child abuse, violations of basic human rights, homosexual love and other adult themes. 

Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters; however, the concept and the plot are of my devising. No profit has been made or will be made from this venture, and no infringement of rights is intended.

Note: All coincidences are purely coincidental; this short story is not meant to infringe or insult any anthropologist anywhere. As I am not acquainted with ethnographers and I have just begun my first anthropology course, all of the anthropological activities are my creation and any passing similarity to established protocol is just that, passing and no more. It is my sincere hope that true anthropologists are more diligent and less self-centered that the characters portrayed.

**Chapter 8: Participant Observation**

The next day, Quatre and Trowa rose early, and ate with a bunch of young laughing hunters by the fire. Some women—sisters and mothers, mainly—served the young men a communal breakfast and scolded the men after every feminine fun-poking jibe. Heero drank some of Wufei's tea, and sat down outside to recharge his laptop's battery even as he set to writing the transcripts of yesterday's recordings.

When it was still early and the mist was heavy and hot against the waxy jungle leaves, Wufei and the shaman disappeared into the shadowy depths of the forest to collect magical items.

Heero kept on working, his fingers flying over the keyboard with phenomenal speed and particular precision. Sounds reoccurring were imbedded within his synapses, and the language was surely and certainly installed within his brain. He was reviewing the transcribed records for typos—unlikely, but possible—when Duo finally woke.

Somehow, Duo stumbled to his feet and made himself a cup of cowboy's coffee.

That day, he and Duo talked to the women—well, Duo did the talking, but this time Heero was able to understand the majority of the conversation—and helped them weed gardens. Some of the food was clearly from another area, such as the corn, but others, like the potato-like tubers, and the heavy squashes and melons, were definitely native to the area.

In the afternoon, they went to explore the river with the boys and to check the fish traps. Duo described the traps, such as he had described the gardening methods of the women, in remarkably clear and concise terms. Heero took pictures. One of the traps had caught a swimming snake, and the boys killed it with sticks. The boy who had struck the death blow hung the lank trophy around his neck like a scarf.

As the sun went down that night, Heero helped some of the women made dinner, carefully following the instructions on how to cut the fish and gut the fish, while Duo sat to the side with an old grandmother and listened to her stories, while he patiently let her teach him the fine art of weaving reed baskets.

Wufei came back later, and told them that he had seen the hunters moving south along one of the rivers. Apparently, they had been pursuing a band of monkeys, but a jaguar had been in the area, and scared them off. Some of the men had decided to go after a feral pig, who had escaped from a white port on the northern coast. It been living in the area for a few months, and a couple of weeks ago, had killed one of the village boys.

His mother shrugged, where she was pounding a root into mush, and told them that her son had been the worst sort of idiot. It had been his way to go.

Some of the other village women murmured worriedly amongst each other, not quite as blasé about the prospect of their loved ones facing the pig. But, the hunters were going to do what they were going to do, and so the women kept on making dinner.

Wufei handed his record of the shaman's words and went to meditate. Heero built up the fire, made himself some jasmine tea, and transcribed the record. Of course, Duo came in when it was late, exhausted and slumping. He gulped down the tea, complained about the taste, got into his hammock, and fell asleep.

In the middle of the night, when Heero had sixty percent of his REM cycle completed, something woke him. There it was again. The sound of muffled choking, a strangled shriek. Duo fell out of his hummock with a thump, twisted up and writhing in his sleeping bag. Heero stood up and touched Duo. The whimpered stopped. So, Heero straightened out the twists in the sleeping bag, carefully untangled the braid from the zipper without breaking a single hair, and then set Duo back in the hammock. After that, he was able to complete his REM cycle without incident.


	9. Chapter 9: Psychology Shapes Up

Ratings and Reasons: R, for violence, references to non-consensual sex and child abuse, violations of basic human rights, homosexual love and other adult themes. 

Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters; however, the concept and the plot are of my devising. No profit has been made or will be made from this venture, and no infringement of rights is intended.

Note: All coincidences are purely coincidental; this short story is not meant to infringe or insult any anthropologist anywhere. As I am not acquainted with ethnographers and I have just begun my first anthropology course, all of the anthropological activities are my creation and any passing similarity to established protocol is just that, passing and no more. It is my sincere hope that true anthropologists are more diligent and less self-centered that the characters portrayed.

**Chapter 9: Psychology Shapes Up**

Over the next couple of days, Duo and Heero managed to settle into a sort of lopsided routine. Sometimes, they spent the morning gardening, weaving baskets, pounding flour, hauling wood or clearing the encroaching greenery with the boys using prized machetes. Duo particularly liked machetes. Around midday, they would spend a few hours wandering the village together and talking to people.

Apparently, hair was a definitive personality statement. Many of the villagers thought that Heero, with his functional self-cut hair and stoicism, was a warrior. And, they thought that Duo was a madman questing for his spark.

Heero agreed.

Afternoons passed quickly, and were filled with intricate and detailed tasks: such as the thirty-one ways to strip bark so that the texture would be perfect when woven into a tree-climbing clinging rope. Sometimes, they hunted with the boys, chasing down the scavengers that hung about the edge of the village, shooting birds with darts, spearing fish, or playing games.

Of course, Heero excelled at all physical activities. Jay had tested, trained, and enhanced him intensively over the period of several years under extenuating circumstances; perfection was the only viable result. He had, of course, primary skills and abilities. For example, he was able to execute multiple aerial acrobatics if given a dive of sufficient height.

At one point, he had been standing on a limb of middling breadth in the canopy, and had felt a sudden shift in weight as the structural integrity of the branch disintegrated; with point three five seconds warning, he was able to adequately move his body to prevent damage, maximize chances of preventing ground contact, and launch himself from the branch.

It was accomplished.

He caught himself, and managed to swing down to the forest floor with minimal injury. Carefully, he tested himself to determine his operation performance and repaired the damage by relocating his joint.

The boys thought that it was remarkable. He earned the warrior-name, "W'ng," which meant that he was one of the "Piop'l" and possessed the "spark" that defined humans from non-humans.

Duo thought it was, "Disgusting. I didn't know people could do that, and I didn't ever want to know. Damn!" He shook his head. "You're fucked, you know that, Stone Face?"

Heero blinked. It had only been the practical thing to do.

That night, they sat around the CPU fire with the women. A lot of the children were lolling around, sleeping, and those bordering on adolescence were valiantly trying to keep their eyes open. Duo had been in nonstop action. If he was not asking just the perfect question, he was getting the exact perfect answer. Sometimes, he even managed to do both at once. Previously, Heero had thought that linguistic feat impossible.

Duo managed to work himself around, at least, that's what Heero thought he was doing, to a sort of finale. "So, Mi'a, it if is not an un-terrible non-imposition, may I ask you something, maybe of a sort of maybe personal inner fire nature?"

"Ya, ya…" Mi'a waved him off, and propped up her youngest on her knee. "You are too fancy with words, boy-o. You are nothing to me, see? So, yes. Go on."

"How did you deal with his death?"

Her face darkened a little, and her lips thinned. She looked away, but decided to answer instead of playing dumb. "Iya, I said the words. I put him in the place."

The other women were listening intently.

A gleam entered Duo's violet eyes, and it was eerie. "The place?"

"Yes." She petted her youngest's hair. Softly, "The place of origins."

Duo was staring at her, intensely, his gaze trained intently on the way Mi'a's hands touched her boy's blondish curls. He managed, "I thought that the Piop'l came from ashes and light?"

"Aa. Ya." She dismissed those words with an it's-obvious wave of her hands, and repeated with some amusement, "We come from ashes and light."

"What place, then?"

"That place. The other place. The place of origins." She shrugged. "You know if you know, and if you do not know, you do not need to know. I think, I have the feeling that you will know. You will have the need, and you will know when the time is the time that is right. Yes?"

A light suddenly faded from him, and his grin sprung into place. "Uh, sure, I don't really get that, but yeah." He fiddled with his braid, flipped it over his shoulders, and clasped his cross. "Thanks for the advice."

Heero didn't think that sounded like gratitude.

"No issue. You will understand when you do." She smiled sadly, reflecting on the loss of her child. "It is no problem."

"Can I ask, what were the words?"

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, light shining ever followed by night. Then whatever I needed to say, so that I would not hold his light to the ground with my darkness. Blood is like that, you know. It shares things."

"Hm." Duo shrugged. "I don't really know. I was raised by the village."

"That is sad. No cousins? No pair-cousins?"

"Iya, no. That was not how it was."

"Wae, that is sad. Sad for you. Sad for the village because of you. But, since you don't have the blood understanding, I will tell you that it is a good thing to know. It will help you understand the workings of smiles."

"Smiles have workings?"

"Of course. Same as tears. Same as love. Same as war. Same as life. All have workings, only it is a matter of time before we understand how the ashes fall."

Somehow, that comforted Heero. If things that incomprehensible and ethereal had workings, he could dissect, examine and eventually understand these human things.

"Could you tell me what you mean by that?" Duo seemed to be getting a bit of his enthusiasm for anthropology back.

"Some." She shrugged, and picked up her child. "Some others, you just know or not know." With her characteristic curtness, she grabbed her little girl's hand and pulled them both back to her house.

"Thank you." Duo muttered, and tapped his recorder as if to remind himself of something. "Yeah, thanks."

Some of the village women excused Mi'a for her curtness. It was just her way, they said, and then gave the boys more appropriate goodnights. No one seemed to think any less of the young men for retiring early that night. Some vague laughter drifted through the dark air, and ashes were gently raked over the CPU.

Ni'loko' walked back with them, being as close to a neighbor as they got. She was not with her pair, because her pair was pregnant and not feeling up to moving around. She talked to them good-naturedly, and in the manner of women everywhere, told them about her husband. She sprinkled pale white dust, from dry river clay, around her little house. And, Duo was so preoccupied that he did not even notice. Heero had to learn that it was to determine which pests and what pests were eating her stores. That method only worked during the dry season.

Inside King's Cot, Heero brewed some tea. High in anti-oxidants. Unnecessary, but possibly beneficial. Wufei still wasn't back yet, but as he was the one who had brought this blend, Heero set a cup aside. He figured that this was called courtesy, a manner in which professionals attempted to treat each other. It seldom occurred.

As Heero carefully organized his belongings, downloaded the recordings, and otherwise prepared for a sleep cycle, Duo stalked around the perimeter of the house. He was trying to write in his journal while he stalked, but that did not seem to be a very effective method.

"It's not enough. Never." Duo snarled. "I want the answer!"

Well, Duo hadn't been addressing him. So, Heero went to sleep.


	10. Chapter 10: Work Must Go On

Ratings and Reasons: R, for violence, references to non-consensual sex and child abuse, violations of basic human rights, homosexual love and other adult themes. 

Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters; however, the concept and the plot are of my devising. No profit has been made or will be made from this venture, and no infringement of rights is intended.

Note: All coincidences are purely coincidental; this short story is not meant to infringe or insult any anthropologist anywhere. As I am not acquainted with ethnographers and I have just begun my first anthropology course, all of the anthropological activities are my creation and any passing similarity to established protocol is just that, passing and no more. It is my sincere hope that true anthropologists are more diligent and less self-centered that the characters portrayed.

**Chapter 10: Work Must Go On**

Something murmured, and then gently touched his shoulder.

Heero lashed out, and then blinked when he felt silken hair against his hands. His fist was poised, pressed slightly against the tip of Duo's nose, ready to drive the small bone there through his brain. Duo.

Duo. Anthropologists. Team. Assignment. Right. Three am in the morning?

Disoriented, Heero released Duo. Carefully, he relaxed his muscles by group, took a deep breath, and sighed. It wasn't a test. It wasn't a test.

Blinking, Duo rubbed the back of his neck, and then spoke quietly, "Hey, Heero?"

Wufei still wasn't back. "Hn."

"What do gorillas do if something dies?"

Now, it was Heero's turn to blink as his brain processed the unexpected question, chewed up the information, and spat something out. "They have a plant-based diet."

"I mean, like another gorilla or something." Duo laughed a little, but he looked…there was a word for it, Heero knew, but did not know the word. "What is another one of their little gorilla war buddies dies or something?"

Heero blinked. That seemed obvious. "They mourn."

"Yeah, like how?" Avidly, Duo latched onto the fact. " Tell me! Like so?"

Heero made an eloquent sound of annoyance. "Read my report."

The darkness fell back into silence, and Heero was three fourths of the way through his sleeping process. "Hey, Heero?"

"Hn." Could he hide the body somewhere? Or make it look like an accident? Not viable. The natives knew and understood the territory. Was it possible for Heero to die of a deep-set desire to strangle?

"Is the report on your laptop?"

"Yes." Heero ground out. Quickly, he flipped open the laptop, turned it on, and uploaded the document into Duo's pc, and handed it over.

The rest of the right went dreamlessly, and without incident.

In the morning, he woke up and dressed in his characteristic blue biking shorts and green tank top, did his exercises, and ate a nutrition bar. He handed one to Duo, whose eyes were still glued to the screen of the pocket pc as he furiously took notes in his black journal, and Duo ate it without a word.

Then, suddenly: "Why did you study them?"

"I needed to study something within sufficient range of Jay's radio signal."

"There were chimpanzees sharing the southern edge of the territory, which was, by your description, likely to be in a place that contained less radio interference." Duo pointed out, skeptically, snapping his pc shut and tucking his journal away.

"Hn." Heero acknowledged.

"So…" Duo pressed, "So, Stone Face, why the gorillas?"

Heero thought about it. He did not know. It seemed like a good question to consider, really; but, it had just seemed natural, at the time.

"Damn, talking to you is like talking to a wall. No wonder you got along so good with the apes! Man, you got the same level of communication. Shit." Duo sighed, and flopped back into the hammock. It swayed precariously. "So like you were really into that whole scene, huh? Citations are just fab. Damn, what's this taste in my mouth? It's like morning breath only gritty? Yo, did you give me something?"

"Hn." Heero finished organizing his things, and looked at Duo. As he was the linguist in their pair, and needed the most social interaction, he generally directed the activities of the day. Remarkably, he could do so with a modicum of responsibility, if not outright sensibility, although one would not have been able to derive that conclusion from his syntax.

But, Duo just flipped his braid around, and played with it thoughtfully.

If Duo did not choose an activity soon, Heero would begin to default into productivity, and fall into the rhythm of transcription.

"Sooo, so so and so!" Duo sprang up from his hammock and began making himself some cowboy coffee. "What do you think about our progress on the "mission objective" that that nancy prat handed out to us like a blue bill, eh?"

"No methodology exists for establishing trust. Only time and consistency seem to provide the necessary basis for such behavior." Heero summarized several readings.

"God, Heero! You are such an absolute—"

"—ly correct anthropologist." Trowa finished. "Excellent supposition."

Heero nodded. That was a high compliment coming from Trowa, a man who was able to gain the aforementioned trust of many secretive human groups.

"Tro! You're back!" Duo bounced around happily and then rushed up to heartily exchange back-thumpings and grins with Quatre. "Q-man, the sweetest of the honey bunches, did I ever miss you! With the lump of lead for company, nights were as long as they were dull!"

Trowa rolled his eyes. "You picked him."

"Duo." Quatre said reproachfully. "You must know, I am no longer the "sweetest" one here. I am the debt-leader of the Manganacs."

"Manganacs? Debt-leader? Man oh man, baby, does it sound like you've got one helluva story to tell!" Duo pushed his sleeping bag off the hammock, and then fluffed it up and positioned himself by the steeping pot of cowboy coffee.

"Is the recorder on for the report?" Heero asked.

"Hm? Oh, no." Quatre smiled apologetically. "We only have about a bar of batteries between us and even less memory…and that's even with staggering the usage of our devices. Luckily, we chose Trowa's pda for the upload of the report docs, and so at least that record wasn't lost…I am tired. Why would I want to record something I've already been through, anyway? Oh, that didn't sound quite…"

"Summaries can include interpretation." Heero said, stiffly.

Considering, Trowa nodded. "Point."

"Woah, do you hear that shit they're singing out there? Heero, upload their files as quick as you can, so that we can get out there! This sounds too damned exciting to miss, Cat!" Duo grinned. Bouncing up, he gulped down the scalding hot coffee even as he grabbed his recorder and leapt out.

Quatre sighed wearily. He did not look to be at optimum levels—it seemed that he was injured, partially doctored, unclean, and exhausted. "Yeah," Quatre whispered. "No problem, Duo. No problem."

Work went on. Simply handing the devices over, Trowa waited patiently for the upload and for the extra bit of power that could be absorbed from Heero's battery.

So, Heero completed it and redistributed the devices.

All of them went out to make what they could of the rambunctious rabble, the chattering women and the beaming men.

Snagged, Quatre was wedged into a cluster of admirers. Rashid was kneeling before him, pressing Quatre's hand against his forehead, and murmuring reverently. Some of the younger hunters were grinning opening, and ruffling Quatre's brilliant blond hair even as their sisters and wives touched Quatre's pale skin and cooed over him.

Smiling with painful compassion, Quatre delicately pried the feminine fingers from his forearm and nodded at the men. "You flatter me, really."

Slipping off to the side, Trowa managed to sidle into the domain of the older women and around the food preparation area. A blithe purpose filled that place around the fire as the women bustled to and fro, so close and never touching, a culinary choreography. At least the busy atmosphere there was less stifling than the one Quatre was ensconced in.

Of course, Duo was darting everywhere, managing to get everyone's opinion of anything, and he definitely focused on figuring out what exactly was going on and why, while obtaining everyone's opinions of hunting, gaming, killing and the rituals involved.

It felt a bit strange to be away from his incessant chatter, but most of the pairs had split up, as families had welcomed the bruised hunters home. The smell of cooking and smoked game was heavy in the air.

Wufei had shown up, trailing after the shaman. His brow was furrowed.

Contenting himself with the periphery, Heero picked up his video recorder and set about documenting. He watched until his feet ached.


	11. Chapter 11: Story Time

Ratings and Reasons: R, for violence, references to non-consensual sex and child abuse, violations of basic human rights, homosexual love and other adult themes. 

Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters; however, the concept and the plot are of my devising. No profit has been made or will be made from this venture, and no infringement of rights is intended.

Note: All coincidences are purely coincidental; this short story is not meant to infringe or insult any anthropologist anywhere. As I am not acquainted with ethnographers and I have just begun my first anthropology course, all of the anthropological activities are my creation and any passing similarity to established protocol is just that, passing and no more. It is my sincere hope that true anthropologists are more diligent and less self-centered that the characters portrayed.

**Chapter 11: Story Time**

Women had labored, and men had put a callous hand into the production. A fire dominated the village center, as tall as a man, and that meant all than all five of the anthropologists. A veritable feast was laid out on heavy leaves, and spread throughout the entire village, steaming with the smell of roasted everything, baked somethings, boiled this and that, and fried other things. Shells from nuts had been stringed on knotted bits of colorful twine and were festooned about the village, flowers and ripe fruits hung from every imaginable place, and the men and women were like tropical birds, in their beautiful woven clothing and their bright bird feathers.

Even Mi'a couldn't complain about this, and everyone else was positively beaming. Ni'loko was latched onto her husband, eyes sparkling, and her heavily pregnant pair friend was leaning against her, a tired smile playing about her lips. The wisewoman's apprentice, Ni'an, was nearly, Heero believed the cliché was, jumping with joy. All of the dramatic dancing, the spontaneous song, the casual contests and other entertainments had died down of their own accord as the food had come out, spread on broad leaves if it was messy, or in baskets if it was not.

Duo was staring at the food, intensely, as if he halfway expected the flatcakes to pick up their platters and make for the woods.

Once the shaman came out of his house, followed by Rashid, Quatre, Trowa and a few of the hunters, the happy jabber quieted, and then silence fell over the village. In the distance, the monkeys were hooting.

"We pray to whomever deigns to listen," the shaman began, his English heavily accented but clear for having learned the words by wrote, "that we are grateful for our friends and our food. We are grateful to have this chance to live. Amen."

"Amen." The villagers echoed reverently. Duo and Quatre echoed the sentiment.

Then, they dug in. It was nutritional fare, and it felt…good to eat.

When all were sated, and picking at the food reluctantly, the wisewoman dragged her apprentice to an open area at the edge of the village's center. Sighing, Ni'an put a heavy drum across her legs and began thrumming a dark rhythmic beat. After a few measures, the wisewoman began chanting lowly and monotonously. A respectful quiet overcame the village, and everyone carefully shifted their bodies, and scooted closer.

"We crept through the woods until our feet panged and our stomachs were clinging to our bones; we could hear only the sound of the animals crying, mocking us for our failures and fearing any success. We followed the sound of air and water, and came to the place where the river is white and rough, and we were at the place of Where the River Eats Stone and the earth holds up her belly away from the cold hungry waters and arches up into stone bridges."

Trowa, Quatre, and the hunters were acting out the story. The hunters held spears at the ready, and were approaching an imaginary gap with caution as the two anthropologists trailed behind casually and curiously.

"We could see the man-eating-pig, we could smell his harem rooting in the luscious ground of the land bridges. So, we crept slowly, fanning out across the turf, our spears hungry and ready, across the land bridge. He, ugly animal, was far enough from his sows that we could take him with our spears. But, that was not to be! Suddenly, the river ate the land! And, he, on the edge of our crumbling world, grabbed it."

Quatre dropped to the ground, stabbing his spear into the earth. The hunters were clinging to him, and one was "writhing" in the "river" a few feet away. Trowa was still standing, fumbling in his pockets to retrieve something and looking worriedly down over the bank.

"He, yes, he, he held onto the spear, his arms tight, and we were close enough to grab him, and cling like new borne babes cling to life. Unwrapping a rope from in his vest, he knotted it one-handed to the spear."

Neatly, Quatre tossed Trowa the rope looped around spear, and Trowa braced himself heavily, hauling the rope up. Quatre let go, and Trowa cried out. The rope skidded through his hands for a moment, but then he caught hold of it, and started pulling the hunters to their feet again.

"He was grabbing us, forcing our hands to the rope, pulling us to safety, and letting us clabber over him, using his own legs, arms and shoulders as a stair to safety; but his sacrifice went beyond this. We were dry on shore, and he was the last clinging to the rope, when he heard the scream of the drowning men down the bend. He let go of the rope, and one by one, he swam against the white water to bring them back to land."

In dipping steps, which were obviously meant to mimic swimming, Quatre slunk over to the flailing hunter and pulled him out of the water. Gasping, Quatre reached up and Trowa pulled them both to the bank.

"This other, here, was our anchor. He pulled us from the water one by one, and held the rope that saved us in his hands and kept the spear that braced us firm between his feet. He was a stone in the midst of a storm, and when the blond one who saved us was weeping with weariness, and his hands were slack on the rope, this one, here pulled him up and held him into life. Thus, we were saved from the whim of the war between water and earth."

Happily, the hunters clasped Trowa and Quatre with earnest hands, and dropped to their knees with their heads against the compacted earth. They were prostrate with gratitude.

"But, the danger was not over yet, not for all of the people. A few were standing on the far, crumbling bank that was but a barren slide of mud, and they were cornered by the ravenous beast. The pig was mad. Of that, there was no doubt. His eyes were dark but red with blood, and slaver dripped off his broken tusks and pustulant hide. I was bleeding, and the bank was weak beneath my feet.

"This tall one here, he looped up the rope in the branches of the trees, and then the blonde one led the hunters across the waters to where the pig had cornered us. He led them to victory! The pig squealed with anger as well placed blows caused blood to pour from its skin and its eyes. The men shot down the sows, and even as the bank began to give, we hitched up the corpses on our backs and swung to the safe side of the bank."

A few of the hunters picked up the children, who squealed like little piglets with unabashed joy, and writhed where they were slung across their father's backs. The hunters mimicked the journey across the river, and then there was a small victory dance on the far side, which Trowa and Quatre happily partook in. Some hunters made wild pig calls, and to the delight of the children being carried, tossed them triumphantly into the air, and caught them again.

"And, so it is, that this food we eat is the fruits of our labors, and the result of an honored debt. Our people rely on our hunters, and our hunters live because of this thing, and so all of our people will follow when the hunters are called and our debt is asked to be paid. We thank you. And now, it is, that this one here is Sandrock, for he came to us when all of the rocks became sand beneath the heavy water, and this here is Heavyarms, for his arms are heavy with our weight and his exacting strength."

A handful of dust was thrown into the fire, and blue sparks bloomed in the fire and spiraled upward, dancing in the thick dark smoke. There were some oohs and aahs and some of the little children shrieked.

"But, mom! I didn't inhale!" Duo whispered to Heero, stifling laughter.

It seemed like a cultural thing.

"Welcome!" Rashid grinned at two anthropologists, and slapped them heartily on the backs. Quatre didn't stagger beneath the heavy blow; instead, his smile grew a trifle wider. "Now, go sit with your friends! You may be the heroes of the day, but we have better storytellers!"

Genuine laughter rippled through the crowd. Several anxious wives and happy children shouted out thanks and congratulations to the two anthropologists, while many loving families gathered in closely together, and some of the older wives and mothers scolded and harangued the men for being stupid.

"You know, they could have died." Duo whispered, grinning.

That was probably true. "Hn."

All of them sat down, in fairly close proximity, to listen to the other stories of the various game hunts that had happened on the way back to the village, and the various famous hunts, from legend and memory, that had happened before this. All was orchestrated magnificently. And, the pig, cooked in a multitude of spices, was split up equally amongst the families and savored.

"You did well." Wufei nodded at the heroic pair curtly.

"I am just glad that we've got names." Quatre laughed. "I mean, being called the white puny one was just starting to get a bit…wearing. I know how I look, but I am glad that I did get a chance to prove my competency."

All of the anthropologists stayed up late into the night, talking, laughing, and listening to all of the stories these people had to tell. A lot of rambunctious dancing took place, as did animated discussions and a few small wrestling matches. Heero mainly video recorded the event. He did not dance. Surprisingly, Duo had a great singing voice, and he crooned the villagers a melancholy song in a language no one knew.

The gathering waned as children fell asleep, young couples wanders off hand in hand, and the anxious wives got the chance to reaffirm their husbands' lives. The anthropologists, weary from all of the action during the day, walked to King's Cot very slowly. And heavily.

Wufei sat down, built up the fire, and began making his nightly cup of tea. "They boil water here." He commented. "They say that fire purges the evil spirits from water, that fire makes evil flee."

"Sounds like a tradition from the techs." Duo yawned, sliding off his hammock partway and then wriggling back on. His eyelids were drooping conspicuously.

"Yes." Wufei put the leaves in, and let them steep. "Also, the shaman showed me some processes of distilling and developing medicine. Some does seem fold based, but there is a great deal that seems to be build on variations of Western medicine."

"Oh?" Quatre queried, staring at the fire. He was fiddling with the shell buttons on his grimy, pale pink shirt nervously.

"Yes. He keeps…immaculate oral journals, many of which seem to follow the scientific method. Observations of patient reactions to various treatments are memorized and transmitted from shaman to apprentice over time."

Cool." Duo thoughtfully chewed on his lips, one arm dangling down and trailing onto the floor. "I wish that I had something like that, you know, like a big tradition to follow or something. I mean, dude, to be pour into something you can like hear, you know, your fathers father talking about how he saw this one girl die because of that, and know…I mean, that must be really cool. Hey, has anyone figured out the hierarchy thing yet? It's really starting to bother me. I can't figure out how wealth is distributed, or how leaders and shamans are chosen."

Heero reflected on it, and decided he did not know either. From what he had seen, everyone collected everything they could from the various gardens, foraging expeditions, and hunts, and cooked what they could at the large central fire, and split up the rest equally. Yet, it was in the nature of social animals to wish to assume leadership and powerful positions, and any society tended to have a set pattern of selection…

"Huh." Quatre blinked.

"Stop it." Trowa said, suddenly. "No one will care."

It startled everyone.

One of Quatre's buttons snapped off between his fingers, plinged against a rock, and skittered into the fire. He stared at Trowa.

"No one will think you are weak." Trowa reiterated, and he reached over to unbutton Quatre's shirt. A broad span of violet bruises and various contusions covered Quatre's chest, and Heero wondered what they weren't seeing beneath the grime and sweat and paint on his face. Some of the bruises were hand shaped.

Apparently, some of the men, in their panic, had grasped Quatre as their life line and held a bit too tightly.

"Damn, Q-man?" Duo breathed. "Why didn't ya speak up?"

"I didn't want to…" Quatre fidgeted. "Worry you?"

A good bit of Wufei's tea and one of Duo's clean priest shirts went to cleaning Quatre's cuts. Heero applied his medical antiseptic. Some wounds seemed indicative of larger injuries—the blood filled bubbles on Quatre's side, the lumps across one of his arms, the deep color of the bruises across his ribs. Duo's shirt was ripped up and made into bandages to wrap around the abused ribs, and to bind Quatre's sprang ankle.

"It was a rock." Quatre insisted, staring at his foot. "If that had got my head…"

"Someone know how to fix dislocations?" Trowa queried, wincing and rubbing at his stiff shoulder.

"He does!" Duo jerked his thumb at Heero, effectively volunteering him. "I mean, Stone Face is like a fucking veteran with that shit! Hell, man, I saw him pop how own arm back into place, like it was freaking quotidian. I mean, shit!"

Sighing silently, Heero stood up, paced around the circle, sat behind Trowa, and popped the offending joint back in.

Wincing, Trowa muffled an undignified squeak.

Quatre giggled slightly, and shook his head. Smiling, he delicately picked up one of Trowa's long fingers hands and put it in his lap. A makeshift bandage was glued onto the skin with blood and the fluid of popped blisters. Carefully, Quatre tugged the scraps of linen off, and washed Trowa's lacerated hands, and then gingerly applied the antibiotic cream. Trowa was absolutely still, staring at Quatre with a strange intensity.

"Fuck! Here I am. Duo Maxwell." Duo grinned. "And, in the middle of the jungle in a hut filled with psychotic heroes! And, a psychotic Heero!"

Heero grunted.

As if burned, Quatre dropped Trowa's hands and stared at Duo.

"I do not have a mental disturbance." Wufei said stiffly. "Now, the remainder of the tea is finished steeping." And so, he gave everyone what he could.


	12. Chapter 12: Corvidae Incident

Ratings and Reasons: R, for violence, references to non-consensual sex and child abuse, violations of basic human rights, homosexual love and other adult themes. 

Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters; however, the concept and the plot are of my devising. No profit has been made or will be made from this venture, and no infringement of rights is intended.

Note: All coincidences are purely coincidental; this short story is not meant to infringe or insult any anthropologist anywhere. As I am not acquainted with ethnographers and I have just begun my first anthropology course, all of the anthropological activities are my creation and any passing similarity to established protocol is just that, passing and no more. It is my sincere hope that true anthropologists are more diligent and less self-centered that the characters portrayed.

**Chapter 12: Corvidae Incident**

Happily, Duo piled some more food into his mouth while he was talking to the wisewoman, Ji'han. He was asking her why she didn't have a pair friend, and why she hadn't married. She, of course, was confused about why he was asking. Of course she didn't. That was just the way it was.

Quatre was a distance away, sitting in a sun drenched garden with some of the young hunters, reluctantly demonstrating how to tie various knots. Some of the men had looped sections of rope around each other, and were good-naturedly rough housing for the benefit of the girls who were gardening. At a slight distance, Wufei was sitting by the shaman, Prayir, who was directing a building project. Some of the older men, and Trowa, were carefully bending poles into place and interweaving green saplings into patterns according to the shaman's instruction.

Apparently, something was going to happen in a few days, but no one had yet told the anthropologists exactly what that something was. Overnight, they seemed to have reached the gleeful consensus that "surprise" was the best way to bring this about.

Irritably, Heero put aside his video recorder, and glared at the wisewoman's apprentice. Ni'an grinned cheekily back at him, and scooted a bit closer. Heero edged closer to Duo, picked up the recorder, and zoomed in on the new pattern that one of the older warriors was busy weaving.

Hm. It looked oddly like circuitry. Heero filed that away for further reference.

Snarling, a mangy feral dog stumbled into the edge of the village, and collapsed against the side of Rekon's house. A bird was lodged in its jaws, flapping weakly. Some women worriedly grabbed and their children, and the young men had stopped wrestling.

Duo's mouth snapped shut, and he stared.

"Dogs don't usually get this far south." Ji'han said, worriedly, and jabbed a finger at her staring apprentice. "What think you, girl child?"

"I am not a—" The girl sniffed, and thankfully leaned away from Heero. "It does not seem right. We don't usually have dogs down here, or those black carrion birds who so like the city and love the ports. It reeks of evil."

"Yes." Ji'han agreed. "A shaman has cast a spell against us."

"It's got it." Duo growled, jerking to his feet. So tightly that his knuckles were white, he clasped his borrowed machete. Caressing the blade's edge, he laughed brightly and walked over to the dog. It was gnawing on the bird. So, simply and surely, Duo lifted up the blade and neatly lopped the dog's head off.

All of the villagers were frankly gaping. Even Heero was stunned.

So, so gently, Duo picked up the head. The bird was already limp, and entangled in the yellowed and broken teeth. Carefully, he pried the jaws apart and pulled the bird gingerly out. Blood and various fluids were dripping onto his hands. Duo fell onto his knees, and began to shake.

Heero had seen Duo kill birds before, even black colored birds despite his inordinate fondness of the hue. He did not see why this bird was so special.

"A crow, a crow, a crow…" Duo whispered, holding the bird reverently, and stroking it on the bony ridge at the base of its skull. "Do you know what crows are?"

Birds.

"Crows are the divine messengers, punished with blackness, and despised for loving death and carrying souls to the afterlife." Duo's fingers were red, and he was crooning a hymnal at the bird. "Crows are death.

"No…" He whispered, brokenly, caressing the bird's swings, touching his palm to the sleek breast and the stuttering heart. The bird's head drooped, and then lolled backward at a strange angle. Pressing his fingers through the feathers, Duo began making some vague choking noises. "No. No. Death does not die! Death lives! Death LIVES!"

Snarling, he strode over to the dead decapitated dog, kicked it over, and stomped on its rib cage until there was a resounding crack. The crow carcass was cradled tightly against his chest, and he howled with laughter. "Death begets death! I am DEATH!"

If Duo had been a gorilla, he would have been expelled from the kinship territory. But, he was not, and it was never wise to approach the panicked or the posturing; so Heero waited patiently.

Quatre, his eyes vivid in his pale face, was clasping his hands over his heart with an expression of immense pain—yet, he still hung back, somehow sensing that his sort of compassion would not help. Trowa had moved so that he was standing slightly in front of Quatre, and, oddly, he must have been the only person that hadn't even spared Duo a glance. Wufei had placed his arm judiciously across the shaman, and the wisewoman and her apprentice were looking at Heero in askance. All of the villagers were remarkably quiet, and some of the women had shoved their curious children back into their houses, or neighbor's houses.

Suddenly, Duo quieted and stared at the bird. "Hey, Heero, do you want to go and bury this thing with me? It just doesn't seem right to…leave it out, ya know?"

Insects were collecting about the dead dog.

"Hn." Heero commented.

It seemed the right thing to say, because Duo nodded as if he had expected it, and then spun on his heel and marched right out of the village.

The shaman rushed over to the dog, and began barking orders on how to dispose of the carcass. He had decided that an evil spirit in the dog had invoked Duo's madness, and that it was only prudent to dispose of it correctly. The wisewoman was going to cleanse the area and purify the machete, while her apprentice went to investigate the rest of the village to make sure that the spirit hadn't possessed anything.

Heero followed Duo far into the jungle, and deep into the boggy swells of shadow where the birds sounded different and animals stayed in the trees.

"This is perfect." Duo declared, and then he got down on his hands and knees and began to dig. Heero mimicked him. Duo scattered a bit of dirt over the feathered corpse, and then begun to fully bury it. Heero helped, until the muddy earth was mounded. Duo gathered up two small sticks, felt around his body for some twine, and looked like he was going to cry. So, Heero donated a shoe-lace to the cross making venture.

Sticking the cross in the mud, Duo stood, crossed himself, and then clasped the little golden crucifix he wore around his neck. He looked absurdly like a priest, in his strange black and white garb. "May his soul and the souls of all faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace."

Duo waited, as if wanting to hear something.

Heero said, "Hn."

Then, they walked back to camp. Duo babbled to entire way, stringing together his usual collection of words that lacked intrinsic meaning. "So yeah, then I was like, woah now, and he was like so what, 'sup punk! I totally like freaked, you know, not in that way, but the other way, so well, he was like yo, and we were both laughing our asses off 'cause the bitches were shit-faced and yeah like either or man, you know?"


	13. Chapter 13: The Mirror

Ratings and Reasons: R, for violence, references to non-consensual sex and child abuse, violations of basic human rights, homosexual love and other adult themes. 

Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters; however, the concept and the plot are of my devising. No profit has been made or will be made from this venture, and no infringement of rights is intended.

Note: All coincidences are purely coincidental; this short story is not meant to infringe or insult any anthropologist anywhere. As I am not acquainted with ethnographers and I have just begun my first anthropology course, all of the anthropological activities are my creation and any passing similarity to established protocol is just that, passing and no more. It is my sincere hope that true anthropologists are more diligent and less self-centered that the characters portrayed.

**Chapter 13: The Mirror**

Waking oddly unsettled at the uneven time of four in the morning, Heero left King's Cot and walked down the curving paths of the village. Some of the villagers snored, one couple was up arguing, a mother was nursing a baby, and a sister was comforting a little brother recovering from a nightmare. Timik and Marika were at the eastern edge of the forest, rustling rhythmically, and Heero wondered about how the villagers dealt with adultery. And, he left the eastern side of the village, determined not to know, not yet. So, he wandered down the trail to the river, and sat down on a flat rock.

The patterns in the river repeated.

A soft splash interrupted the moment of silence and contemplation. And, so Heero stood up and walked curiously downstream. The river narrowed, and rushed through the rocks like a jumble of foamy silk and silver filigree.

A sleek silver shape twisted playfully, and slipped through the surface. Slightly dark hair, like tainted gold, twists and curls and sticks to his soft pale skin. Heero could see the pale protrusion of bones through the milky skin, the water droplets glimmering, sliding down the bluish tracery of pale veins. So pale, he is a watery naiad, an alluring corpse ready to pull the unwary into his cold arms with the barest pressure of his fingertips. Only, Heero knew that if he pressed his hands into those arms, made hand shaped imprints on that flesh, he would press into warmth.

Heero Yuy knew Duo Maxwell's secret, and he feels, irrationally, like he has sinned. Pinned beneath the heavy weight of shadow, the enclosing embrace of the looming trees, Heero Yuy feels like a transgression.

So strongly, the lithe muscles shifted in the light, and Duo swayed with the scintillating stir of the river, like a river reed. It was like he was dancing, imagining that he was insignificant, dancing dead. Slippery, he sank sleekly into the sway. He kept his eyes open and wrapped his arms around his chest tightly. Silver bubbles bloomed on the surface, as Duo squeezed the air out of his lungs. His hair was golden water weed, floating up to the light and his eyes were polished beneath the water. The cross was gleaming, glowing. He looked like the moment before watcher was victim.

His heart was beating in his throat, and he was gone from that place. He could see Duo's indigo eyes searching the dark, pupils wide, questioning, open.

Suddenly, he was back at King's Cot, wakeful. He couldn't even remember walking back there, but he knew that he had. So, he set up his laptop and started transcribing. The flow of his fingers across the keys was relaxing, and he did not have to think, to wonder, as he typed in a trance.

Duo wandered into King's Cot, with shadowlike silence. "Heero!" He whispered, surprised, and his lips drew down into a pout. "What are you doing up?"

"Hn." Heero commented, and continued typing.

Sighing, Duo self-consciously finished up braiding his wet hair, and tied it off with a black thong. His cross was gleaming, glowing in the luminescence of the laptop screen, and his priest's shirt was gaping open.

Quickly, Heero turned away and continued typing. He could hear the sound of Duo slipping into bed, as if he was making a conscious effort to make noise for Heero to grasp at, a rustle of cloth, the creak of the hammock as it swayed. It did not feel like Duo had gone to sleep.

Heero couldn't sleep, and he stayed up typing until the light was lemony on the horizon, and the monkeys had begun making calls while the birds warbled.

"Hey, Heero?"

Ah. He had thought so.

"Maxwell. Shut up." Wufei snapped. He had pulled the fire poking stick out from a tangle of Duo's dirty clothes, and was picking through the ashes with it. A coal sparked, and glowed brightly within the Cot's gloom. Wufei fed it some tinder and set up some logs above the delicate flame.

"That is so cute, Woofy! It's like you're a boy scout or something!"

Wufei snorted. "I'm Chinese."

"A commi scout, then?"

"Hmph. We survived the nuclear war better than you capitalists." Wufei shook his head, and began to change into a relatively clean set of clothing. The loose cotton pants looked almost as space efficient as Heero's own preference. Pouring some water onto his comb, Wufei slicked his hair back into the customary tail. Frowning, he felt around his head and then re-did his hair. Heero couldn't tell the difference.

"Ha! That is sooo just because you've got like a billion million more people than us Americannies!" Duo tried to bounce on his hammock, and fell off onto Heero. "Ouch, ouch, ouch! Fuck, that hurt! Anyway, we are sooo kicking Chinese ass at the world stock exchange! Whoo!"

"Oh, Allah." Quatre rolled over, and good-naturedly rolled his eyes at Duo. "Bickering, on a fine morning like this? As it is, I'll have you know that my father is grating iboth/i of your countries into Kraft cheddar."

"Riiiiiiiiight." Duo rolled his i's strangely, and snickered. He was still half-stuck on the hammock, and his struggling was starting to interfere with Heero's typing.

"Oh, hey! Right-o! I remember! I was going to ask something and everything, and I got side-tracked and all."

"Hm." Quatre squirmed over to the tin and peered it. "The water's not ready yet."

"But, oh! I haveta say it or I'll loose it."

Already done, Maxwell, already done."

Making a small sound, Trowa sighed and rubbed his eyes. His fingers stopped, touched a bruise on his cheek, and then he finished rubbing his eyes. "Go on."

"Well…." Duo grinned slyly. "Where's the lineage?"

"Hm." Quatre blinked and stood up. He located the leftovers basket—they had taken to doing as the natives did, and eating dinner for breakfast—and dug it out from a migratory flock of Duo's socks and coffee filters.

Pulling out several of his favored boiled buns, he offered them around. Trowa accepted. Wufei was eating rice that he had made yesterday morning, and Duo had crammed one of his twinkies into his face. It was getting crumbs in Heero's hair. Irritably, Heero opted for a nutrition packet and tried to shake the greasy twinkie bits off his head.

"You're right." Trowa said.

"Huh?" Duo blinked. A piece of chewed twinkie fell out.

"Oh, yes. I see." Quatre sighed. "I think I spent too much time in the U.S. really, and had…well. I guess I got used to bilineal nuclear families. I didn't even think! So, now, what do we know?"

"Marriage is monogamous. No instances of divorce. Division of labor is gender-based, but relatively egalitarian. No known protocol for establishing marriage. Sex before marriage is culturally feasible. No known protocol for establishing parentage, or importance of doing so. Children are raised by mothers until puberty, at which point the pair selections are made, if at all possible. Male children then begin to work separately from females. Gardens seem interchangeable, and empty houses seem to be communal property. There are no inheritable positions." Heero recited.

"Ni'loko, next door, is relatively young. And, she has her own house." Duo pointed out. "It is close to her pair's house, and her husband's pair's house, but not at all related to their parents' houses. One of her middle brothers, who does live closer to the parent's house, takes care of them." "The shaman, the wisewoman, the hunt leader, and the storyteller are the only ones in the village without pairs; however, they do have apprentices." Wufei sighed. "The incest taboo includes all members of one's nuclear families and of one's pair's nuclear family. However, exogamy is preferred."

"I thought that they were, you know…." Duo shrugged. "Bigoted?"

"Yes." Trowa said, deep in contemplation. "But, there is a method."

"A method?" Duo asked, skeptically.  
Trowa nodded.

"Well?" Quatre pressed. "What kind of method to do what?"

"I believe that…" Here, Trowa frowned. "It determines the pairs, excludes the unwanted, includes the marriageable."

"That would make sense. We just have to figure out what it all means, and how all of this has to do with…with what that Zechs wanted us to look into." Quatre sighed.

"You've seen the tattoos?" Trowa asked.

There was a shocked silence.

Of course, Duo broke it. "Knew there was a reason to have a spy around, boys, just knew it! So, Tro, what tats have they got?"

"A double line of dots, at the nape of the neck around the atlas vertebrae." Trowa said, reluctantly. "Wine red. Symmetrical."

"Huh." Duo blinked. That really spoke for them all.

"So," Quatre smiled brightly. "Who wants to ask them?"

"I will." Wufei nodded. "The shaman has been kind to me."

With that consensus, they moved out into the day. The villagers seemed more excited than usual—they were talking more quickly, laughing more often, and moving with exaggerated gestures. Still, when Duo asked, there was always the mysterious, "you'll see; do you want to help me with this?" They kept the anthropologists very busy.

At midday, everyone slowed down. Small groups formed, with Quatre, Trowa and the storyteller entertaining the children, and the older boys. A group of girls was watching them, and Rashid and his hunters were watching both of the gatherings. Most of the married women had gone to visit Ni'loko's pair, who was due soon. Of course, Wufei was with the shaman, hopefully to ask about the tattoos. Heero had followed Duo, and they were sitting amidst the meandering conversation of the older crowd. Some crone was teaching Duo a song.

"No, no no!" She shook her head firmly. "Iya! It is not like…like that! It goes to the sound of the heartbeat! How else would one sing?"

"Ahem. Well." Duo shrugged and laughed. "We all have our different traditions, lady! So, could you repeat that last bit?"

"Sure, Shi'gami'." She rolled her eyes, and the other women snickered.

"Oh, so I have a name now?" Duo grinned, and bounced where he sat. "So, what does it mean, huh? What oh what?"

Some of the women looked distinctly uncomfortable. Mi'a, of course, being the least tactful, spoke up, "Spirit of Death. The Possessor that harvests the sparks and takes the brilliance to--"

The other women hushed her.

"What?" Heero asked.

"Thank you." Duo smiled, his eyes teary. "It means so much to me. It is fitting."

"Ah…" The women exchanged glances. "You're…welcome?"

"So, so very fitting."


	14. Chapter 14: A Touch of the Edge

Ratings and Reasons: R, for violence, references to non-consensual sex and child abuse, violations of basic human rights, homosexual love and other adult themes. 

Summary: A team of five young anthropologists are recruited by the notorious Romafeller Foundation to investigate something long lost; instead, they find each other and much more than they had bargained for. 1x2, 3x4, 5xS, other. AU. WIP.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters; however, the concept and the plot are of my devising. No profit has been made or will be made from this venture, and no infringement of rights is intended.

Note: All coincidences are purely coincidental; this short story is not meant to infringe or insult any anthropologist anywhere. As I am not acquainted with ethnographers and I have just begun my first anthropology course, all of the anthropological activities are my creation and any passing similarity to established protocol is just that, passing and no more. It is my sincere hope that true anthropologists are more diligent and less self-centered that the characters portrayed.

**Chapter 14: A Touch of the Edge**

"God of Death, eh? God of Death." Duo whispered, his voice so quiet it was nearly consumed by the fire. His hands worked blindly over the brace of birds he caught, sawing of their heads, gutting them, putting the bloody feathers in a brightly hued pile.

"Heh, I like that. I like it a lot." His eyes were fever bright. "You know, they always say in prayers, that it's because of God. Like that's supposed mean something. Sure, everything was because of God, but that doesn't tell me what the hell to do with it all! Shit, Heero."

Heero blinked, and looked up. He then realized that Duo was "soliloquizing" and required no verbal input. So, he turned his attention back to the weaving, carefully tightening up the bands of leaf fibers until they made diamond shaped knots. It was a task set by the wisewoman, but he had yet to determine the meaning.

"Shit. Like death is a mercy. I ain't never seen no one happy about dying, unless they were hopped up in la-dee-da land, and even then, it sure ain't a fucking ball in the park, you know what I mean? Shit. God of Death. Damn straight! That's all there ever was, you know. I just need to figure out the fucking answer. I want just one. Is that too much to ask? Just one, Heero? Just one?" He slapped out some of the guts onto a leaf, so the boys could use it as fish bait later.

"Hn."

If Duo was a gorilla, his family group would have expelled him from the territory.

Softly, Duo leaned over him, like a spiderweb caught in a breeze. He touched Heero's cheek. His hand was slick was blood. Warm.

Slowly, Heero leaned forward. He tried to see his reflection in Duo's eyes.

"Hey, guys!" Quatre burst in. "Oh, ahem, sorry. Um…I'll be back in five, okay?"

"No, no!" Duo pinched Heero's nose, and bounced up. "I'm almost done with the birds. So, 'sup, Q-ball?"

Heero glared. He wanted to kill that idiot.

"I figured out what's going on!" He paused, and fiddled with his shirt, smearing dirt down one edge. "Actually, I don't think that I exactly figured it out, because the Hunt Hunter told me. But, he only told me because it's not going on now."

"Oookay." Duo blinked, plucked some more feathers. "Hey, Heero, could you get me some water over here? The blood's sort of crust underneath my nails."

"Hn." Heero handed him a canteen, and then took it back when Duo had a hard time opening it. He opened it, and poured water over Duo's hands.

"Ah, thanks man. You rock." Duo grinned, and grasped some more feathers.

Quatre was watching them with a very strange look in his face, and a small half-smile lighting his pale eyes. Oh, right. That.

"Recording?" Heero asked, and at Quatre's nod, added, "Report."

"Right, then. Apparently, all of this preparation has been for a harvest festival. I was told that it was supposed to be very wonderful—religious re-enactments, ritualized harvesting, a birth feast for the new baby, feasting in general, dancing, singing, and, of course, as it is a harvest festival, a great deal of harvesting within the small gardens."

"Okay." Duo grinned, bouncing back on his heels. His handful of bird guts sloshed partway onto his shirt, and then he pulled them stickily back. "Huh. Damn fine thing that I wear black, huh? Ne way, sounds just like piles of people having people like fun. Harvest, and all that. Giving thanks. What's more?"

"Remember how we were talking about lineage?" Quatre offered, brightly.

"Yeesss." Duo said slowly, his bright eyes narrowing. "Yo, man! Get on with it!"

"Well, they told me that there are approximately three tribes that are nearby—but, it's likely that the numbers fluctuate, as do the subgroups. And, every few years, each tribe makes an appearance at the harvest festival, at which point the exogamous marriages occur, apprentices are chosen, children birthed are inducted into the Piop'l, and some few young adults are outcast." Quatre grinned.

"The selection process…" Duo nodded, thoughtfully, and then frowned. "But…"

"Hm. Oh." Quatre sighed. "There's a problem. The Sanq' have not arrived."

"Yes. That is the problem." Wufei said quietly from the door. He stepped in, looking stiff and ill-at-ease. Slowly, he eased himself down beside his things. "The Shaman is organizing a meeting by the CPU."

"The wisewoman wants her birds." Trowa said. "The meeting starts soon."

"Woah! You don't mean the Sanq' the Sanq', do you?" Duo crowed, shaking one of the decapitated birds in front of himself. "Boy, did Mi'a ever had a mouthful to say about them, and the way the other women were staring at her, man, did they agree or what about it all! Damn."

"Duo." Quatre shook his head.

"Oh, fine. Ruin my fun." He grinned, despite proclaiming his disappointment, and then continued on. "Said they were a bunch of layabout sucks ups that uselessly drape themselves around the old colony. And that they're rather, er, passive-aggressive."

"Social hierarchy. Economics…" Quatre mused, his eyes going soft and dreamy, like a love-struck girl. It was his thinking look. "What do you think?"

"No." Trowa said.

How Trowa had derived a single-syllable negative from such nebulous beginnings of a supposition, Heero had not the hypothesis. He felt vaguely uncomfortable, as if the seams on his clothing had changed, but he was aware that there was no variation. Covert, he surveyed Duo, and determined that he was not the only one.

"You're right." Quatre sighed despondently. "There's trade, but…"

Duo seemed to catch on. "And, it's not a gift-giving society. Even the most egalitarian societies I have read studies about have had some sort of…system of acquisition, I guess. I mean, not to sound like a pessimist or something, but everyone likes claiming a place, and I just don't see that, or anything like that here. Yet, they do have an element of possession. I mean, we all know Mi'a is a complete shrew, but she's not about to go rummaging around Ni'loko's things. So, why isn't anyone just claiming the methods of production, or harnessing it, or something?"

"No disparity." Trowa commented.

Quatre started, and blinked. "You're right. Rashid owns no more wives, no more land, no larger house than any of the hunters. His wife works the same as all of the other wives do, and even though she is rather good at picking woven designs….it's not because she's married to Rashid. It's just…happenstance."

"We're missing something." Wufei said, his voice sure and even.

Sharp cracks rang.

There was utter silence.

Gunfire. Gunfire. Guns.

"Oh, hells." Duo whispered.


End file.
